


We Are Shangri-La

by Cluegirl



Series: Scatterlings and Orphans [5]
Category: Avengers 2012
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Pre-Slash, UST
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-22
Updated: 2012-07-29
Packaged: 2017-11-10 12:05:00
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 28,549
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/466073
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cluegirl/pseuds/Cluegirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Building a house is much easier than building a home, especially when you've never been sure what the word 'home' really means.  Money, strangely enough, does not seem to make that easier.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. 1

When HYDRA attacked Stark Tower on that windy October night, it was the most fun Tony'd had for weeks. They hit at around eight PM, with a concentrated attack of gunnery from three of the neighboring buildings, a flyover of Hammer-style attack drones that had been juiced up with some sparkly blue version of the Chitauri's tech, and an invasion team that thought they were being sneaky when they came in pretending to be a cleaning service. So precious!

Okay, whatever they'd done to juice up their ordinance with that eerie blue shine was a bit problematical, but bigger explosive punch didn't necessarily matter when the blue shit wasn't actually hitting Tony, or Tony's stuff. Which, mostly, it wasn't. Between the upgrades he'd done to the Suit's firing trackers and Jarvis's early birthday present of a defensive laser battery on the tower's roofline, things were going just dandy. Tony was owning the airspace, picking off the drones and gunnery nests while Coulson, who'd been over to bust Tony's chops about that Bogota incident again, had stepped up to help Jarvis handle the invasion team. That left Bruce free to hide out in his room and listen to chanting monks instead of automatic cannon fire. No need for the Big Guy when Tony was perfectly comfortable with kicking All The Ass on his own. 

It was almost like old times, really -- Tony aloft, on his own and outnumbered, the bad guys pinned down, overconfident and outclassed; repulsors and bullets and witty repartee for all. Christ, but he'd missed this!

"Sir, I'm detecting civilians on the roof of the Hamden tower," Jarvis said, picking a drone out of Tony's flight path. "They appear to be hostages."

"Not for long," Tony said and dove, triggering the Wasp missiles to extend from his shoulders. The fire control locked in eight targets the moment he came into range, and then it was just a matter of stop, launch, and laugh at the hostages' confused faces when all the baddies suddenly laid down for a dirt nap. 

Another drone roared overhead, wobbling and spitting until Jarvis' laser battery put it out of everyone's misery. "How many more of these clowns do we-" Tony paused to shoot down two more, the second of them pinwheeling directly into the last of the gun installations with a passable R2D2 squeal, "-have to mop up?"

"Assuming they are holding no more units in reserve, I detect five at this time."

"Huh. Candyland." He looped a barrel roll around a missile and incinerated it with a repulsor blast before it got to the rooftop terrace. The explosion lit Coulson in orange and gold at the terrace rail; gun in hand, phone to ear, and suit only slightly rumpled. "Wonder why they bothered if they weren't even going to make it a challenge," Tony called over the exterior mic.

The agent's face was set hard as concrete when he looked up. "This was a diversion," he said over the wind. "HQ is unresponsive. Comm, cell, net, everything. They're in lockdown. Get me over there, Stark."

"Son of a _bitch_ ," Tony answered, and blasted aloft for a better view of the city. Jarvis picked off two drones that tried to follow him up, and Tony shot down a third as he turned to stare. There to the north he could see the Tryskellion, a black hole in the lights of New York, nothing moving around it, nothing exploding against it; dark and still, and utterly wrong. "Jarvis, is the Tower secure?"

"At present, sir. The last gunnery nest on the Blake building appears to have been abandoned, Dr. Banner is presently sedating the captives in the gymnasium, and I should soon have target locks on the remaining two drones."

"Leave the drones to me. You find a backdoor into SHIELD's systems, and find out what the hell's going on over there." He rolled as the proximity alarm started to chime, and dove back for the tower. "Scratch that," he called as the drone, more nimble than its fellows, began to fire on his tail, "shoot this fucker down, will you?"

A single gunshot answered as he and the drone roared downward past Coulson on the terrace. The drone's gun rattled, clanked, and then seized. Tony braked hard, tucked up short and high to let it blaze past and shatter on the granite face of another building. Damn, but that shit never did get old, did it? His HUD showed the final drone turning tail and running for mama, blasting hard for altitude. As he turned to chase it down, Tony found that Coulson's gun was trained on him now; a pint sized dirty Harry who clearly had a poor opinion of Tony's luck.

"Phil," Tony cried, hand over his reactor, "Seriously, buddy?"

"Try to leave me here and I will shoot you," he promised. "And then I'll untie those captives downstairs, turn them loose on your bar, and call in every society reporter in this city." Which, as threats went, was a pretty big step up from offering to taze him, Tony supposed. 

"Okay, but only because I don't want Perez Hilton anywhere near where I sleep," Tony said and drew in close to hover. Phil climbed over the safety glass railing and jumped, throwing an arm across the suit's shoulders. As he was pulling himself into piggyback position, Bruce appeared in the stairwell.

"What's going on?" he asked, amplified helpfully onto the comm, "Jarvis said SHIELD is under fire? Do you need…"

"Unknown, Dr. Banner," Coulson answered as he finally got his legs around the Tony's waist. "You should stay out of sight until we know what we're dealing wi-"

"Sir, I have Director Fury on a secure line," Jarvis cut in, and then the comm filled up with shouting and klaxons.

"-ark, I repeat, do not approach, do not engage! This is a system based attack; hackers and EMPs, not guns and bombs. I do not want you blowing holes in my motherfucking facility, do you understand me?" Something made a frantic beeping over the line until a thud shut it abruptly up. Tony couldn't help flinching. "We will _handle_ this, all right?"

"Sir, this is Agent-"

"Coulson," Tony just knew he wasn't imagining the note of relief that colored the Director's growl. "Barton and Romanov are accounted for. Thor-"

"Took off for fairyland this morning," Tony supplied, flying back up over the rail to land on the terrace. No point overheating the repulsors if he didn't have to, after all. "So I hear Cap's pretty wiz with computers these days. He even knows that kicking them doesn't actually _fix_ anything. You should have him take a look for you."

"Captain America," Fury said through his teeth, "Is off the reservation." Tony felt his balance shift as Coulson, who hadn't shifted from his clinging seat against Iron Man's back, sat up straighter. "His phone rolls straight to voice mail, and he's not answering texts or pages. Agent Coulson, I swear to you, if he's in that drawing class of his right now, I will personally shove that pencil right-"

"No," Coulson cut in, clamping his knees tight enough around Tony's hips that he could actually feel the compression through the suit's armored plates, "That's on Tuesday. Stark, go. Go! Brooklyn, _now!_ "

Tony blasted upward, laboring against the uneven weight on his back. Fury was swearing, savage and low across the comm, Bruce's frantic questions cutting in and out of the profanity like fish in a stream.

"Cap's the real target," Tony answered, angling southeast and hitting the juice. "The Firecrackers and Trojan horses were just distractions so they could get at him alone. I don't even think he has the shield with him!"

"No. That's with the suit, at HQ," Coulson answered, lying low across Tony's back to reload his gun.

"Shit, he'll be... SHIT!" Bruce's curse swelled into a roar. It cut out of the comm feed just as the crashing began. 

"This is why we can't have nice things…" Tony grumbled as the Hulk came bounding past him, rooftop to rooftop. 

"I see it; two o'clock low." Coulson rapped on the side of Tony's helmet, then leaned down to point with his gun to a rising smudge of orange-lit smoke. "Police and fire are cut off."

"Good," Tony growled as the Hulk bounced into sight again, a quarter mile farther off, "Maybe they won't get hurt this time. Jarvis, can you give me eyes?"

"Smoke and dust are obscuring satellite imagery, sir," the AI replied.

"There aren't any ATMs or traffic cameras either," Coulson added. "We took those offline when he moved in."

"So we're flying blind. Awesome." Tony angled in to buzz the shattered tenement block, his HUD picking out targets, too many goddamned targets in the jumble of twisted cars and flattened buildings. Matte black trucks choked off the streets, strafing anything moving with lead and wild blue light. Those would be the first to go, Tony thought, popping out a bank of missiles and slowing his thrust to turn and start blasting holes in HYDRA's perimeter.

Coulson smacked his helmet again, shouting something about the wreckage -- unintelligible over the rattle of guns and the roar of Hulk. HYDRA had repeated the theme of gunnery nests on top of neighboring buildings, but doubled the number for this attack. They were focusing bright blue fire on one particular slump of rubble below. Tony boosted up to the nearest, fully intending to dump the agent there and let him make himself useful, only Coulson, the awkward little shit, had other ideas. He threw his weight hard to the left and wrenched Tony's flight so badly off course that he had to roll with it or risk smashing them both into the fucking wall. This maneuver, of course, brought them squarely unto the line of fire, Tony belly-up to the blue hail with Coulson dangling under his back. Just awesome!

"What the actual-" Tony snarled, boosting and dodging.

Coulson pointed, bellowing "ENTRENCHMENT!" Then Tony saw it too -- a tight cluster of survivors taking shelter in the center of the ruin, hiding behind half-toppled walls and upturned furniture. Some were hunched low over piled blankets and makeshift stretchers while others held the line, fending off the deadly blue light with what looked like mirrors, tin foil and pot lids, God bless 'em every one. That would be Cap's work, sure as shit. Tony couldn't see his face in the fierce little cluster, but Coulson was right; if there were survivors under fire, that's where they'd find their man.

Tony pushed in low and fast though the hail of blue, pausing over the little dugout only long enough to dump Coulson into the middle of it, saying "Get off my back, Phil," before blasting aloft again. Someone in the makeshift foxhole flung a dish at him, just missing Tony's left boot as he went, because yeah, _that_ 's totally gratitude for you, isn't it?

"Hey Coulson, get Steve's lost boys under control, will ya?" Tony yelled, swinging up high to harass a gunnery nest. Farther up the block, the Hulk had hit the rolling barricades from behind ; a big green hurricane, roaring and ripping and generally turning anything that stunk of HYDRA into sticky black confetti. The pieces nicely blocked the escape of those assault cars he hadn't gotten to yet, and turned the whole block into a nice, bright kill chute. All Tony had to do was get to the other end and pick off any survivors who managed to run through the firing line. 

Then Coulson had to go and fucking ruin a perfectly good plan. "Stark. The Captain isn't here anymore," he said over the comm, clipped, curt and anxious. "Told them to wait here and ran off to engage."

"What, in his jammies?" Tony took out a rooftop fifty cal with a repulsor blast, letting the fifty's ammo boxes take care of the goons firing it. Teach them to store their bullets under their gun… except no, all it was going to teach them was that dying hurt. Them being HYDRA, Tony was actually okay with that.

"And unarmed," Coulson replied. "This is officially a rescue mission. Find him, get him out. HYDRA suppression is secondary as of right now."

Tony landed on a clear rooftop to survey the scene below. "Awesome. You calling in the rest of the fan club, or are we keeping this little clusterfuck to-" He winced as on the street the Hulk ripped an armored humvee apart to play whack-a-mole with its occupants. "Ooh, that's gonna leave a stain."

"Backup is en route. ETA three to five. Now find our guy!"

Another of the gunnery nests had spotted Tony. Flashes of blue peppered the gargoyles near his feet to dust as he boosted off once more and swung wide to lead their cannon fire around onto their own units. "Keep your collector's edition shirt on, Agent. I'm on it."

"Sir," Jarvis cut smoothly into the chaos, "I have located Captain Rogers." The HUD split into layered images, tiny, grainy screens of Steve's face as he ran and dodged through the ruined street; of his torso, his back, Steve from above, Steve's heat signature blazing against the night. Every one of them was overlaid with a targeting sight, and the flickering numbers of fire controls trying to keep up with the Super Soldier's evasive maneuvers.

Jarvis had hacked HYDRA's field comm. Because he was just _that_ fucking cool! "You rock, Jarvis!"

"Indeed. The Captain appears to be heading for the cannon installation at the corner of Bay and Prichart, about five hundred yards from your current location."

"Got it." Tony hugged the row of houses so tightly he could hear the glass shattering in his wake. Now that he knew what to look for, he could spot Steve in the mess down below, a streak of blond dodging and bounding from cover to cover. It looked like he was headed for a … dude, how did HYDRA get a fucking tank all the way into Brooklyn without someone alerting the cops? Huh. Fucking New Yorkers. 

"Sir! I'm picking up strange thermal readings here," Jarvis brought Tony's HUD into a tight focus on a section of buildings that were half-toppled and licked by fire. The thermal cam blazed with white and gold heat, but behind it loomed a great big heart of pure icy black. There were six or seven human shaped cool spots hidden within the flaming wreckage too; crouched still and waiting under cover. 

The ambush was between Cap and the tank. Both were out of repulsor range. He boosted his speaker volume to eleven and bellowed in hope. "CAPTAIN!" The bastard hurdled an upturned SUV, flipped Tony a salute with one hand, and didn't so much as break stride. Sitting fucking duck. Tony dove for him, shouting, "DOWN!!!" 

And down he went, just like that. Well, that, and the direct snatch-and-tackle intervention of a Hulk from left field, anyway. Tony was already inbound, so he just juiced it harder and tried to figure out what kind of firepower he still had left for this stunt. Not much, really, and not knowing what HYDRA had lurking in that dark spot, he wasn't exactly keen on the idea of bashing into it blind, but if it had been designed with Cap in mind, then there was a fairly good chance that repulsor fire and alloyed armor wouldn't be on its playlist. 

"Sir! Electricity spike-!" Even as Jarvis was shouting it, Tony saw the coming blast of Thor's lightning ride tangling down into that black, cold ambush. He rolled away from the sizzling clap, glad the suit's buffers had spared his ears, and found himself dodging the downblast of the Quinjet's engine. In the street, Hulk had got his feet under him and was clutching Cap to his chest like a toddler with a very patient pussycat. The guns rattled again, bullets as well as light-balls now, making the Hulk flinch around Cap and roar in defiance.

"Barton, will you do something about those guns," Tony griped, speeding back to the nearest rooftop battery. 

"Thought you'd never ask," Clint's voice came back over the comm. Then, "Duck."

Tony ducked. In a rattle and roar, the fifty cal and its unit were reduced to pinging noises and a greasy stain that somebody was going to need a big tip for cleaning up. The Quinjet took off for another target then, leaving Tony alone in position to follow when the Hulk decided that being shot at was a stupid game, and it was time to take his Captain America Action Figure and go home.

Thing about the Hulk though, was that he was a bitch to track. That whole covering-a-quarter-mile-in-random-directional-bursts thing meant that unless you knew where he was heading, (and let's face it, with Big Green, the only one who stood a chance at that kind of prognostication was the devastatingly hot Dr. Ross, who didn't like Tony at all, to judge by the champagne she'd thrown at him after the Gala thing. Must run in the family.) He had to go for altitude and have Jarvis do the tracking until they were close enough to Manhattan to make their destination obvious.

Ten epic bounces, four pretzeled lamp posts, five traffic accidents (Tony counted) one crushed police cruiser, and half a bodega that would be in for a pretty damned fine grand reopening once SHIELD had it rebuilt, and they were home again. Tony had to weather a warming trend in the cockles of his heart when he realized that his big green buddy's first choice of safe space was really and truly Stark Tower. He did his best not to let it show though, and got to the rooftop terrace about four seconds before the Hulk's landing stress tested the hell out of it. Damn travertine was definitely not Hulk-proof, Tony noted, boosting backward as shattered tile went skidding everywhere. Hulk peered around them, snarling and suspicious, Steve still clutched in against his shoulder so tight Tony wasn't sure the poor guy could breathe.

Tony popped up his faceplate and put both hands out, palm down so the lights wouldn't spook anybody. "Hey there," he said. "Home free, big guy. I think we lost them." The Hulk's eyes narrowed and he turned again, sniffing the air as if he could still scent the half assed diversion attack that HYDRA had staged there earlier. Steve grunted something, the words was lost in green skin, and one hand plucked weakly at the hand that was covering the entire back of his head. Yikes. Hulk armpit had to be a hell of a thing. "Hey, let's let Cap go now, huh?" Tony tried.

Steve made a shrill noise of assent, kicking out weakly with a bare foot, and nudging the Hulk's knee for all of his effort. That brought the Hulk's attention back to him, which turned out to be ultimately, not an improvement. Oh, Steve could breathe better, sure, but being shaken by both shoulders like a doll while the Hulk was roaring in your face had to be right up there on the list of universal pants-wetting events, Super Soldier or no. Steve rode it out like a trooper though, head bobbling back and forth so his goofy grin flashed in the tower's small aircraft warning lights, hands patting weakly at the massive green arms, feet tangling with each other as his one remaining slipper fell off into the rubble.

"Okay," he gasped as the Hulk paused for breath. "I'm okay. Had 'em. On th' ropes." Dude… was he laughing?

The Hulk apparently wondered the same thing, giving Steve a worried sort of _'shut up, you,'_ roar-and -shake that would have rendered a buffalo unconscious. It just made Steve giddy. He let his head loll as the Hulk turned and marched for the seating lounge inside -- just beyond the impact-resistant glass wall that had never been designed with the Hulk in mind.

"Shit! Jarvis, make a hole!" Tony yelped, anticipating glass everywhere, but the panes were sliding out of the way already. They had all but disappeared into their channels by the time the Hulk had carried his still giggling burden across. Unsurprisingly, he made a beeline for the sofa, where he plopped Cap down with a glower and grunt.

"Ow," was all Steve had to say about it, though he didn't quite stop giggling. Tony boosted up to the extractor pad and let the machines strip the Suit away, figuring Steve needed a chance to compose himself. Steve was slumped back against the sofa, limp and flushed under the grime and blood that streaked his skin. His t shirt and sweats were black SHIELD issue, which had probably been how he'd managed to go ninja-ing through the HYDRA stations for as long as he had. He'd paid for it though, in a dozen burns and minor cuts that Tony could see on his hands and arms alone. He was also still snickering faintly while staring at the ceiling. It made Tony really wish that someone who knew how to diagnose shock was around and also less green.

That someone, still green and still grumpy, had parked himself on the carpet at Steve's feet, making it plain that his would be the last word on the idea of anybody going anywhere. The Hulk glanced back as Tony came into the sunken round of the seating area, and he snorted. While he didn't move out of Tony's way, he also didn't move to block him as Tony walked up to Steve and said, "Hey, Cap."

"Hey," His blue eyes looked alert enough when he lifted his head to answer. "You're late." For some reason known only to Steve, that was apparently funny. 

Tony folded his arms over his chest. "Yeah, well from the look of things, you're grounded." Steve glanced up again, and Tony noted that his pupils were both the same size, though he couldn't remember why that was a good thing just now. "Actually, it looks like you're beat. Jarvis, do I need to get him a doctor up here before we send the good Captain to his room to think about what he's done?"

"My room's kind of not there anymore," Steve put in. Tony shushed him.

"Sir, my scans indicate no life threatening trauma to Captain Rogers' system, however there seems to be a piece of metal embedded in his left thigh, which will require medical attention." Jarvis actually sounded worried, which was funny, considering how much worse he'd seen Tony over the years. "Shall I contact SHIELD medical?"

"No!" All three of them, Tony, Steve, and the Hulk answered at once.

"I," Steve said into the shocked silence that followed, "I'm probably gonna crash hard after this. I'll be fine if I sleep for a day or two. Maybe a week. Anyway, it didn't go so well the last time I woke up as SHIELD's 'guest.'"

Tony nodded. "Yeah, I saw the tabloids. And grounded by the Big Guy is a lot different than being grounded by Fury." He didn't mention the cage on the Helicarrier, he knew from the flick of Steve's eyes that he was remembering it too. "You can stay here," he said, and the Hulk made an agreeable-sounding whuffle. "Jarvis, is his-"

"I'm sorry Sir, but the furniture for levels thirty through thirty four has not been delivered yet."

"But Steve's on-"

"I'm afraid level thirty five will need extensive repairs before it can be used, Sir. It appears Dr. Banner made his exit from the building through the south wall." Steve's apartment, across from the gymnasium, which was where Bruce had been with the captives when Fury told them Steve was missing. Great. He tried not to scowl at the Hulk, but to judge from the defiant green glare Tony got back from him, he probably hadn't actually succeeded. The Hulk then whuffled again, grabbed half the sofa cushions, and threw them on the carpet so he could curl up like a dog at Steve's feet. A green dog the size of a tank, with a yawn that would have been cute except for how it showed off way too goddamned many teeth. Still, it meant that Bruce would be pink again in about five minutes, give or take, so that was good. Of course, it also meant that he'd be sleeping off the adrenaline crash for a solid fourteen hours, too. He always crashed hard when the Big Guy got startled, or had to fight his way out.

"It's okay," Tony said, scrubbing at his sweaty hair with one hand, and turning in place to look around his penthouse. "We're good. I'll figure something out."

"I'll be fine here, if you can give me a blanket, Tony," Steve said, grimacing as he shifted. "If I won't be in your way, I mean. I sleep pretty hard when I'm healing." Tony frowned as the movement revealed a seeping smear of red on the creamy leather where his thigh had been. How much blood were those black sweatpants concealing, anyway? And if Steve was going sleep until he'd finished healing, like the dossier suggested…

"Yeah, no," he said, standing and thrusting out his hand. "See, I have a thing about my people going around with shrapnel in their bodies when it's not absolutely necessary."

Steve gave him a strange look, but took his arm all the same. "Your people?" he asked, struggling to his feet, and not seeming to notice the gore his butt had left behind. 

"My people," Tony dared him to contradict while he pulled Cap's arm over his shoulders and sliding in close to get an arm around his waist whether he thought he needed the help or not. "You count. Come on." Luckily, Steve didn't argue. He didn't answer at all, just let himself be led to the bedroom, just enough of his weight slanted onto Tony's shoulders to gratify, but not so much as to worry, and fuck, but that had to be one hell of a pain tolerance that man had if he wasn't even limping! It would cost a lot to get someone up to the penthouse to handle the wound at this hour of night, but Tony was ready to pay it and tip besides. 

"Your bed?" Steve asked, sounding clipped and tight now. "You know this is gonna make a mess."

"Yeah," Tony said, daring him to argue, and trusting the gloom to hide the heat in his face that was absolutely not a blush. "And that piece of metal is coming out of you while it's still not too close to anything vital, okay?"

Steve's ribs flexed under his arm as he took a breath, held it, and let it out in a sagging gust. "Okay. Help me get my pants off." Fuck yeah. How many men in the world had THAT particular order from Captain America on their resume? There should be an "I Pantsed The Star Spangled Man" t-shirt to commemorate the honor, really. 

"Not the circumstances I'd imagined though," Tony muttered, ducking out from under his arm and hooking his fingers through the waistband. It was warm and damp, the fabric tacky against his palms, and suddenly Tony found the whole situation much less hot than it was a minute ago. But he could feel Steve drawing down the cloth in front, so he pulled against the elastic of both sweatpants and tighty whities alike, easing it out over the swell of hip and ass, and oh fuck. Fuck, that was nasty. 

Tony swallowed as the sweats peeled wetly away from Steve's thigh to show the wound, like a ragged mouth about two inches down from the curve of his ass. How the hell was he still walking with that? Those words actually on his lips when Tony felt Steve pitch forward onto the bed, his uninjured leg lurching up with both hands to bring him down on three points. Tony pulled the sweats over his bare, filthy foot, keeping his opinions to himself for now. Steve was shaking just a bit now, head down while the wound up under his butt cheek seeped a new trickle of red through the sticky mess that had gone before. Tony tried not to look at that, focused on getting the sweatpants pushed low enough to step out of. 

"Thanks," Steve breathed when he did so. Then he pulled himself up along the bed, dragging his left leg behind him, until he could flop out full length with a groan. "Okay. You're gonna need pliers."

Tony actually backed up a step, the ruined pants falling from his fingers with a slap. "I'm what? You want me to _what?_ " Because it was one thing to glue himself up after doing the kind of thing that made Pepper mutter about bullet holes, but this was… 

This was Steve, turning his face out of the blankets to fix Tony with one unwavering blue eye. "I want you to go get that really good vodka you keep in the freezer, some towels, a boning knife, and your smallest, longest pair of pliers. Then I want you to come and get this piece of metal out of me while it's still not near anything vital." Tony took another step back, feeling the arc reactor buzz to keep up with his heart. "Or get one of your robots to do it if you can't."

Oh, those should have been fighting words. That should have got Tony's back right up, and his belly full of defiance, and his hands full of competence, and he fucking _knew_ Steve was counting on that, but instead of getting mad, Tony was getting desperate. "Oh, that's just great," he said around the hysterical giggle that was struggling to escape his throat. "Which android surgeon would you prefer, Dr. Dummy, or Dr. Butterfingers?" He moved to scrape his hands through his hair, but froze when he saw the blood drying black in the creases of his fingers. "Look, if I promise to break you out again afterward, will you please let me take you to SHIELD medical and have someone who knows what they're doing remove that? Please?"

Steve sat up at that, and it was obviously a struggle. Tony kept his eyes on the man's face so he wouldn't have to see how the torn skin gaped and bled under the pressure of the movement, but Steve's stare wasn't a much more comfortable option. It was fathomless, enigmatic, and left Tony with the clear impression he had of being weighed, judged, and considered. And fuck if that didn't get right under Tony's skin and stay there. _Don't you tell me what I'm no good for,_ he thought savagely. _Don't you fucking dismiss me again!_

"No," Steve said just as Tony's mouth was filling up with ugly. "No, I need you to learn how to do this. I need to know that you can patch up more than machines in the field. We've been lucky so far, but any of us could go down like this on any mission. If you're the only one who can get to the wounded, then I need to know you can do what's necessary." Tony swallowed, and lost the war against glancing down at Cap's leg. "It's just a little blood," Steve said when he did. "It washes right off. Nothing to be scared of."

"Fuck you," Tony blurted, wiping his palms on his jeans as Dummy rolled in with a tray in one claw and the fire extinguisher in the other. "I'm not… Who says I'm scared of blood? I've replaced my own arc reactor twice! I've seen plenty of blood!" 

Steve smiled and let himself sag carefully back down. "It's different when it isn't yours."

"Captain, Sir," Jarvis said as Dummy came alongside Tony and nudged him with the tray. "I find this course of action inadvisable and ill considered."

"Oh, ya think?" Tony grumbled.

"Necessary," Steve replied.

Jarvis ignored them both. "However, if you will not be dissuaded, I believe you will have better success with this selection of tools." 

The tray held all the things Steve had asked for, and several he hadn't, including the brand new first aid kit from the gymnasium, bottles of rubbing alcohol and iodine, a tube of super glue, and a pair of stainless steel chopsticks Tony had no idea he'd even had. There was even a tumbler of Tony's favorite bourbon on the rocks, because Jarvis was the AI version of a genius, and thought of everything. Tony didn't mind telling him so, even if it came as no surprise.

He spread the towels on the bed -- Steve was worried about the bedding, and Tony was damn sure not going to try his first surgery on the floor, especially after he'd been in combat himself for at least an hour before. His knees deserved better. 

"Go wash your hands really well," Steve said as he settled over the towels with a sigh. "We'll start with the vodka."

"I'd rather the bourbon," he quipped, picking up the tumbler.

"Try to do this drunk, you'll hurt me a whole lot more than you have to," Steve replied, and wow was _that_ ever the sickest threat Tony had ever heard. Also, totally fucking effective. He put the glass back down and went to the bathroom to scrub up. 

Jarvis had brought the lights up when he returned, making everything at once more straightforward, and more horrible. Tony picked up the vodka bottle, his damp fingers clinging to the frost on the glass. "So, since you can't get drunk, we're doing what with this?" he asked, unscrewing the cap.

"Sterilization," Steve replied. Tony aimed a significant look at the bottle of iodine, but Steve just shook his head and folded a pillow in half to tuck between his folded arms and his chin. "Booze is easier to find in the field. Hurts less than that stuff too. Just pour it on the wound and get the blood off." 

It took about a quarter of the bottle, and two towels to get enough of Steve's leg and ass clean that Tony felt like he could cope with it. Steve only hissed once, when the icy, syrupy vodka first splashed against him, but all he said was, "Pull it open a bit. Get a little more in there."

He was shivering when Tony finished, which was understandable because fuck that vodka was cold, but when Tony reached for the towel again, Steve shook his head, saying, "Don't wipe it off. It's numbing things a little." He took a deep breath and clutched the pillow tighter. "Now get a probe, something long and thin." 

Tony picked up the chopstick, thought for a second, and then being a genius, he dipped the business end of it into the bottle of vodka to sterilize it. Or something. Then, because he was not a fucking chickenshit who had to wait for his patient to tell him to get a move on, Tony took a deep breath and a longing glance at the bourbon, then started to poke the goddamned chopstick into the wound.

"Careful," Steve breathed, clenched up so rock-solid still that Tony found himself aching with vicarious stress. Only his wounded leg seemed to have any give at all, twitching reflexively as Tony pushed the steel rod in and farther in and farther fucking in. "Go slow… find the angle of the wound, AH!" Tony flinched at his cry, but Steve's fingers clamped around his wrist before he could pull away. "No, that's it," he panted. "You found it. Push the probe back in till you feel it touch. Then leave it there."

"Just like Operation," Tony said, and thought suddenly, achingly of Pepper, up to her wrist in his chest and panting with terror. This time he felt the tick, metal to metal when the probe found its target. Steve flinched under his hands but then was still for one breath, then two, leaving Tony to stare at the chopstick jutting from his thigh like one of Clint's arrows. 

"Can the pliers reach it?" Steve breathed at last.

Tony compared the two chopsticks and was surprised. It had seemed like sixteen feet going in, but really it was only three inches now he stopped to look at it -- a long wound only because of the angle of entry, but only about an inch below the skin from straight above. If he could cut it out… He swallowed hard and reached past the boning knife for the needle nose pliers, his arc reactor cycling too fast in his chest. "Not… really. They're too big, and the handles are… I'm gonna tear this all to hell if I try."

Steve went still for a second, breathing and all. Then, without turning his head, he murmured, "You might have to. Sometimes it's like that."

"Okay, you know what?" Tony said, dropping the pliers back onto Dummy's tray with a bang that startled everyone but the robot. "We're not under fire in the field right now. I think I can take a minute to find the right tool for this job rather than make hamburger out of your leg, so shut the hell up and let me think, will you?"

Tony opened the med kit, not because he expected it to be useful, but because he needed something to do with his hands while he tried to decide whether ice tongs would be smaller than stir fry tongs, or if both would still be too big for the hole, and maybe he could just run down to the lab and machine something that would actually work right, because how long would that take, and, "Aw _Fuck_!" Tony grumbled as the box flipped open in his hands, spilling bright bits of metal all over his lap and the bed.

Steve made an impatient noise, but didn't scold. Not that Tony would have paid attention if Steve was scolding, because they'd just won the surgeon's handbook lotto, apparently. Apart from the normal gauze, tape and band aids, the kit also held a scalpel, retractor, several clamps, and wonder of wonders, an eight inch long pair of forceps that were _exactly_ what Tony needed. Pepper was SO getting a raise on account of her being psychic!

"Got it," Tony said, ripping the plastic off the forceps and dunking them into the vodka bottle.

Steve sighed, and Tony didn't have to imagine relief in his voice. "Good. Now just follow the probe in." 

And how the hell was Tony not supposed to giggle at that? He was certainly not going to make a comment about Steve watching the wrong kind of porn, because yeah, totally inappropriate, but at least he could laugh for a moment before Steve's hiss of breath and the fucking strangled whimper he made as the forceps penetrated his thigh made Tony feel like he might hurl. Or cry, which would be so, _so_ much worse.

"Easy," he found himself saying, stroking Steve's trembling back with his free hand as he pushed. The chopstick started to droop, the torn flesh no longer holding it firmly in place as the forceps widened the channel. Then all of a sudden, Tony could feel what he was looking for. He grabbed at it, sweat popping all over him in a wash of relief that it was nearly fucking _over._

But then Steve yelped, the muscles under Tony's palm clenching up tight as he bleated, "Careful! God… slow." Tony managed not to drop the forceps in alarm, but only barely. Steve panted a bit, then forced himself to take a proper breath and relax. "Go slow, or it might break off," he murmured, "Leave something inside. Don't want to do this twice…" And well, that pretty much killed Tony's sense of triumphant relief, didn't it? 

Then Steve turned his face out of the pillow, fixed Tony's gaze with one bleary eye and offered up a pained ghost of that heroic smile. "You're doing fine, Tony. Just fine. Let's finish it now, ok?"

Just like that, the miniature freak-out circus that was going on in Tony's three ring brain decided to get real. No Vegas tinsel and bendy noodle girls in spandex for him, oh no; this was elephant pyramids and lions jumping through hoops, strongmen and trick riders and twenty fucking clowns in a suitcase with balloon uzis. He'd got this. He had fucking GOT this! He took a breath, got a better grip on his forceps, and began to pull. Smooth, steady pressure, just like… fuck, just like _nothing at all that was normal in the world of Tony Stark_ , but no that was irrelevant. He had this. It was like a sword swallower was what it was; a sword swallower, only backwards. Yuck, but still better than the alternative.

There was more blood now, stinking and hot all over Tony's hand and running in dark streaks between Steve's pale thighs. Steve was trembling like a wire running current, like it was only Tony's hand on his waist that kept him from hovering over the bed, riding pain like a repulsor wave. Tony was all but panting with the effort of not pulling too hard or too fast, but still getting that damned piece of shrapnel out. (It was the sword, not shrapnel. It was the sword sliding out the sword swallower's… okay, you know, fuck that metaphor. That was a stupid metaphor, and he was done with it.) 

Then suddenly Tony realized he could actually see it; a candy-apple gleam peeking through the gore of swollen muscle, curled up around the forceps, and… out.

Steve slumped under Tony's hand, boneless and spent, trembling and heaving breaths that weren't nearly so measured anymore. "Now…" he managed as Tony put the forceps and shrapnel onto Dummy's tray, "Get some more vodka in there."

Tony liked to think that if he'd just had a chunk of… what was that, steel? Aluminum? Whatever metal it was pulled out of his ass without anesthesia or booze or anything, he'd probably be okay too. Blubbering like a toddler, yeah, probably, but okay in a global sense of 'shit has actually been realer than this, and hey, at least I'm not in a cave in Afghanistan' okay. But he was pretty sure the first thing he'd be able to say wouldn't be to ask his, for lack of a better term, 'medic' to go on and torture him some more. And… well… fuck that anyway.

"Jarvis!" Tony yelled, and because Tony had built him to be awesome, Jarvis read his mind like a good AI.

"My scans indicate there is no further debris in the wound, sir," he said. "Under normal field medicine circumstances I would suggest further sterilization of the wound before bandaging, however Captain Rogers is immune to most known infectious pathogens, and apparently going into mild shock. Perhaps the glue now, sir, and then a blanket?"

That he could do. That, he could fucking do, even if Tony dribbled superglue all over the towels and his jeans getting the tube open. So long as he didn't actually glue himself to Captain America's ass, he was ready to call it good. Actually, if said ass had not just taken Tony's 'no, I've never done amateur surgery with kitchen implements in my life' cherry, he'd have thought gluing himself to it was a fine idea, because it was, by damn, an ass to bust through all gender preference lines. But no, it was, in fact, just too soon. Tony made himself stick to just getting the job done, and blowing mental raspberries at Pepper for doubting he could.

Then he bundled up the tools, the chopsticks, pliers, vodka, bloody towels and all in a wad, and dumped them back onto Dummy's tray. The bourbon spilled everywhere, but Tony found himself all out of give-a-shit. He was sweaty and gritty from combat, spattered with superglue and superblood in equal measure, and pretty certain he'd be lucky to make it through the shower before the adrenaline he'd been riding evaporated underneath him. So he just threw another towel at the slick spot on the floor and went back to yanking the blankets free of the mattress so he could wrap them around Steve like a giant, pantsless blond burrito. 

But as Tony peeled off his undershirt and kicked his shoes away, he couldn't help but notice that the giant, pantsless blond burrito in his bed was shivering. Shivering so hard that it kept making quiet little whimpering noises as if it couldn't quite keep them in. Tony weathered a shiver of his own, hands frozen over the button of his jeans. "Jarvis, can you-?" The fireplace behind him lit up with a whoosh of gas, filling Tony's bedroom with flickering golden light that he couldn't care less about at that moment.

"I will arrange for the linen service to call tomorrow, Sir," said Jarvis.

Only the ringmaster of Tony's three-ring brain circus seemed to think that sounded a hell of a lot like _'oh just do it already_ in polite computer talk. And never let it be said that Tony could not take direction. Especially since the odds of Jarvis giving him bad advice were so astronomically slight that Tony hadn't even bothered to calculate them.

So he just did it. He dropped his filthy jeans over Dummy's arm, he unwound the tight-wrapped blankets, and he crawled into bed with Steve. 

With Captain fucking America. 

With Steve. With Steve, who sighed gratefully as Tony pressed up to his cool, slightly clammy back and wound his arms around. Steve, whose hands folded over his, as though to keep them pressed against his skin while by slow, gradual increments, his shivering began to ease. Steve, who just _had_ to be asleep by now. Howard's files and SHIELDS had agreed that once Cap's body got the chance to go down after an injury, he was pretty much comatose until the super serum fixed things up. Hell, it was probably a miracle he'd fought it off long enough to boss Tony around. He had to be gone. 

Because no way would Steve Rogers be cuddling -- spooning with Tony like this otherwise. Hell, when he'd gone to into the ice, doing things like this got men sent to prison for life, right? And anyway, hadn't Steve said outright that he wanted Tony's friendship? Even in the 21st century, friendship generally did not include half-naked spooning in bed. And that was a crying shame, actually.

But Tony didn't let go, and he didn't acknowledge what his rebellious cock thought about all that body contact, either. Instead, he just held on and buried his nose in the fine, pale hairs at Cap's neck, drawing the smell of him down deep into his memory as the taut-strung bundle of muscle in Tony's arms finally began to thaw. This totally fell under the 'out of my head exhausted' denial clause, he decided, absolutely not quite nuzzling. Cap smelled like he'd been fighting bad guys in the street, dirt, brick dust, ozone, smoke, sweat and blood all clung to his skin, but he also smelled like winning that fight against some pretty harrowing odds. _Smells like victory..._ Tony smiled and let that complex scent pull him down into sleep.

The murmur of thanks he dreamt he heard as he dropped off was entirely beside the point.


	2. 2

"Congratulations, Tony," Bruce said when Tony showed him his surgical handiwork the next day. "You are officially not a genius at everything you attempt."

Tony cursed into his coffee, glaring at the big blond lump of unconscious jerk who'd got him into this. "God dammit, I told him this was a dumb idea. But you can fix it, right? I didn't screw things up too bad?"

"Relax," Bruce said, flashing the impish grin that let Tony know he was being fucked with. "It's not actually the worst I've seen." 

Tony closed his eyes and took a breath, aiming for an expression of stern reprimand when he opened them and said, "That was mean."

Bruce just grinned wider and went back to examining Cap's naked ass, which was even prettier in the daytime and not covered in blood, so long as Tony ignored the jagged black line just below it on his thigh. "Actually, this is pretty decent work, given that Steve's not a machine," he said, and lifted the black t shirt Steve still wore to peer up his back beneath it. "I'll give you some pointers for next time. You'll get the hang of it."

"Hah! No. No, this game is a dumb game, and we're not playing it anymore-" Tony began, but choked it back when Bruce took out a pair of scissors from his kit and cut right up the back of Cap's shirt. There was about a hundred miles of sleek, lax muscle under there, unblemished but for streaks of dirt which Tony just knew had been minor wounds the night before. Damn, but that serum was something.

"Steve's right though, Tony," Bruce went on, opening a packet of sterile wipes from his kit. "Even Thor's got some basic field medicine skills, and you're usually the one of us with the best mobility and reaction time if something goes wrong in the field. You shouldn't be the only one without a clue of what to do if someone's hurt." 

"I'm _so_ not the only one," Tony said, though because it was kind of shitty, he said it into his coffee cup. 

Bruce heard him anyway, but only smiled and went on with Cap's sponge bath. "The Other Guy doesn't exactly count, Tony." 

If the world were a fair place, Tony wouldn't have been drinking when the mental image of the Hulk pawing the ground like a trained pony doing addition in a carnival show occurred to him. Bruce looked up at Tony's snarfing sound, but Jarvis came to the rescue before he could demand to be let in on the joke.

"I'm sorry to interrupt, sir, Doctor Banner, but Agent Coulson is calling."

Naturally. His 'Captain America Is Unconscious' voyeur sense must have been tingling like a mother all night long. "Take a message," Tony began.

"From the elevator."

Tony gave the ceiling a glare. "I swear I designed you not to be this much of a pushover," he told the AI warningly, and walked out to the main room to meet the impending invasion. 

"I changed the override codes last night," he told the agent when the doors slid open. 

"I noticed." Coulson stepped into the room, hands full of briefing files and donuts. The second he handed to Tony, ignoring his entirely justified annoyance.

"How the hell do you keep getting in here?" Tony asked, accepting the box. Bomboloni's creme horns would buy off a lot of sins, but Coulson't habit of security breaches were gonna require a bigger bribe than that. Like a dark chocolate covered, marmalade donut with his name on it at the least. Or maybe two.

Coulson only gave him that little sadistically satisfied cheek-twitch that meant either he'd got his way, or else he was fantasizing about tazing Tony again, but all he said as he headed for the table was, "Ask your CEO." 

Facepalming with coffee in one hand and a box of Manhattan's best donuts in the other was a tricky prospect, but Tony wanted to do it anyway. Because the penthouse's basic security protocols required for any changes in password and override codes to be automatically sent to Pepper. And Pepper obviously liked Coulson a hell of a lot more than was reasonable. Dammit. 

"Relax, Stark," the agent told him, setting the files down. "I'm not actually here for you."

"SHIELD sent some flunkies by last night to collect the HYDRA drones you captured," Tony said, detouring to the kitchen to bring the coffee over. "Jarvis said they were gone before we even got back from Brooklyn."

"I know." 

Tony looked down into the agent's bland, expectant stare and felt his hackles rise. "You're not taking Steve," he said. Not enough donuts in the _world_ , dammit!

Coulson cocked his head. "I take it Captain Rogers is not in any condition to tell me so himself?"

"He's asleep," Bruce said, closing the bedroom door behind himself. He looked wary, distrustful, and about two steps from code yellow. "He sustained a minor injury in the attack last night, but it's been treated now, and he's sleeping it off." 

"I'll need to check for myself," Coulson replied, half turning in his seat. 

"Yeah, not like watching the guy sleep is creepy or anything," Tony said, bringing three plates and two clean mugs to the table.

Coulson turned back to him, just the slightest tic of annoyance on his face. "I can't report on what I haven't seen. That's called rumor, and we leave that to the CIA. So if I can't report on Rogers' condition after the attack last night, then you can pretty much expect Director Fury to bring his debriefing to him. And the Director will not come alone." The agent took a sip of the coffee, then added cream. "Trust me, letting me take a look will be much simpler for everyone.

"But you can accept the word of a medical professional, right?" Bruce settled into the debate like he was haggling for figs in a street market, so focused he actually took the mug of coffee that Tony poured for him without asking if it was decaf. (It wasn't. Tony had a theory.) "Because I am a doctor of medicine, and I can vouch that Captain America is in no danger. What injuries he did take last night, the serum is handling just fine. So there's no need to disturb him."

Coulson peered at Bruce, then turned the same stare on Tony, and reached over the table to flip the box of donuts open. "You two think I have orders to extract Rogers and return him to SHIELD, don't you?"

"Don't you?" Tony asked, grabbing the first chocolate he saw. "I mean Fury's been trying to get Steve out of Brooklyn for months now, right? His apartment got pretty much totaled last night, so if Fury was going to make a move on bringing his asset in it would be now."

"Asset. I really hate that word," Bruce grumbled, taking something with jelly in it for himself. 

"You're not wrong about Director Fury," Coulson answered as he pulled a pinkish cake donut out onto his plate. "The Captain's Brooklyn apartment has been a serious security risk from the moment he moved in there. SHIELD agents are good at passing under the radar. We're trained to seem unremarkable unless we want to be remembered. The Captain still thinks of himself as unremarkable when he's not in uniform, but he can't help standing out from a crowd."

"Unremarkable," Tony rolled his eyes. "He's the photo-op darling of every idiot with a camera whenever the Avengers hit the streets. His face is on trading cards, movie posters and shot glasses, and the only thing he does to pass is wear boring clothes when he gets out of the spangly jumpsuit. Even the paparazzi weren't gonna fall for that forever." All of which was more or less the argument Tony had intended to use when he got the chance to talk Steve into moving in once he woke up from his coma.

"The superintendent was a Polish immigrant, and a veteran from the war." Coulson said mildly, chewing. "Wojohowicz made him the day after Rogers moved in, from what we could tell. Within a week every other tenant in the building knew they were neighbors with Captain America. They didn't let on to him, but he was the whole neighborhood's unofficial mascot. So either HYDRA proved itself smarter than the paparazzi, or someone on the block sold him out. Which was what the Director said would happen if Rogers insisted on living on his own."

Bruce gave Coulson a thoughtful stare. "But you don't agree." 

"I agree that the apartment was a security risk," Coulson answered. "I agree that the team's emergency response time wasn't good enough to cope with rush hour traffic or the subway. I agree with both Stark and the Director that the team needs to be housed at a central headquarters, preferably with its own small air craft available for mission assembly." He paused to sip his coffee. "I even agree that last night's attack will force the Captain to admit that his living arrangements put civilians at risk. The Director would be a fool not to use this leverage to bring him in and get him officially on the SHIELD payroll once and for all." 

Bruce made a noise in his throat that was suspiciously like a growl. Tony gave him a nudge in his pulse monitor and dropped a cruller onto his plate. "But," he prompted. "You obviously have a but here."

Coulson's thin lips quirked up for just a second. "But I do not believe Captain Rogers would benefit from living at SHIELD HQ. Director Fury wants to keep him safe, but Rogers isn't going to be kept. It isn't in him. He'd try to comply out of guilt over what happened in Brooklyn, but it wouldn't last." He pushed his plate aside, pulled a tablet out of his briefcase and tapped in a password about twenty digits long. To nobody's surprise, the file on display once the screen unlocked was the Captain's. 

"Steve Rogers does not like to be told where he's going, or what he and his team are going to do," Coulson said, scrolling down to where the pages were clearly scans of typed documents. "His wartime records are full of behavior that would have gotten any other soldier on disciplinary action. If he hadn't got the results he did, and if Colonel Phillips had been a different sort of Officer, the Captain would have been court-martialed ten times over."

He slid the tablet across the table and Tony picked it up, glancing down the columns with a practiced eye. "Disrespect, insubordination, failure to follow orders, absent without leave, desertion of his post… and I think this one here's just a nice way of saying mutiny, isn't it? Way to go, Capcicle. Didn't know you had it in you!"

"And Fury wants that kind of an influence rattling around SHIELD's home base?" Bruce asked, more worried now than dubious.

"I believe what the Director is counting on is that the only thing stronger than Captain Rogers' independent streak is his loyalty and his desire to be nice to people." 

"So… what, he's going to ask Steve to please, for love of Duty and Apple Pie, be a good soldier and not create an internal insurrection that will undermine the chain of command?" Tony had to giggle at that, but Bruce just looked more worried.

"Tony, I think Steve would actually try," Bruce said. 

"He did try," Coulson answered. "Before the Initiative was assembled, Captain Rogers was assigned an apartment owned by SHIELD. He had everything he needed to acclimate himself to living in this century, but Fury asked him to stay on base until he could be caught up to speed. He did, and he picked up a lot in that time, but he also displayed profound symptoms of depression, social anxiety, and PTSD."

"Not to mention anger management issues," Tony added around a mouthful of donut.

Bruce kicked him under the table. "I thought the super serum wouldn't let that happen," he said. "I mean, the data I saw on the project said it was supposed to maintain an -"

"Optimum level of health and well-being," Coulson finished for him, because of _course_ he had Cap's file memorized. "However as Stark demonstrated on the Helicarrier, he can still register and react to painful and irritating stimulus. He was low coming out of the ice, cut off from everyone and everything he knew, and grieving as well. Staying at SHIELD wasn't helping him get out of it at all."

"He seems okay now," Bruce said.

"He's got us now." Tony pushed back his chair and strode to the bar. "He's got the Avengers, and we're keeping him. Not only that, we're taking Thor, Clint, and Natasha too."

"Fair enough," Coulson said, so mild and agreeable that Tony almost fumbled the handful of chain and brass he was pulling out from behind the Blue Curacao bottle. Seeing his look, the agent shrugged. "The Black Widow's face is all over the international news whenever the Avengers take the field. That renders her less than useful as a covert agent, and her fame limits her utility in most other capacities SHIELD would require from her. She can't go back into the field without you clowns, so it only seems fair that you should have to keep her entertained in the downtime."

"As for Thor, I’m sure Dr. Foster would be actually relieved to have him out of her as-" Tony snorted, and Coulson gave him the tazer glare as he finished, " _-tronomy lab_ while she's working. Her assistants keep showing up hungover or injured because he talks them into sparring or going drinking when he gets bored. And he gets bored often."

"He's totally allowed in the tree fort," Tony declared, purely on the strength of the mental image of Thor persuading drunk physics nerds to take swings at his big Nordic face. Well, that, and the fact that Thor was an Avenger and already had an apartment on level 30, across from the communal kitchen and media room. "So why are you giving us Barton without a fight?"

Something flickered across Coulson's face too quickly to be read, something dark and pained and very complicated. "Because Clinton Barton hasn't returned to active SHIELD duty since his encounter with Loki. He avoids SHIELD installations unless he's meeting up with the team or directly ordered to appear, and then he's gone as soon as he's dismissed. He hasn't attended any of the mandatory psych evals, so he hasn't been assigned any new cases, and he's actively refused to set foot on the Helicarrier for any reason, or under anyone's orders." He sipped his coffee again. "We're about to lose him. If it weren't for the Avengers, we'd have lost him months ago."

Silence reigned over the table for a long moment, then Bruce sighed and put his donut down. "I can sympathize. I don't think I could have stayed at Culver University after my... accident. Not even if General Ross hadn't been waiting to dissect me. It would have been too much, knowing what I'd done. What I'd destroyed."

Tony thought briefly of the abandoned Malibu campus of SI, and the original arc reactor that had saved him from Obidiah Stane. He'd had the building razed after the fight, hoping to bury the ghosts of a million bombs that had flown in his name before he'd learned to understand what he was doing. Then he returned to the table, slapped three keys down onto the table beside Coulson's plate, and stole the rest of his donut.

Phil raised an eyebrow, touched the keychain fobs briefly, and then swept the hammer, bow, and spider off the table and into his pocket.

"So why bother to bring Steve in when the others are already all but gone?" Tony asked, because if anybody could interpret the logic of the machine behind the eyepatch, Coulson would be the guy. 

"They'd follow him." Or apparently Bruce would be the guy as well. "We all tend to meet up with Steve at HQ, even if it's to go somewhere else -- even Tony does. We know where he lives… lived, but Barton uses the Tryskellion's computer lab for Steve's lessons, and Natasha and Thor both spar with him in the gym there, and he and I usually eat in the commissary before we go to museums. Fury can't have missed that."

Tony shouldn't have missed that. It pissed him off beyond the telling of it that he had. "Steve's staying _here_ ," he said, picking up his coffee mug again. "Because Bruce isn't moving to SHIELD, and I'm sure as fuck not moving over there, and so if the Avengers are going to have a secret clubhouse, it is _going_ to be here! And Steve's going to be here too! Once I've fixed the walls."

"Sorry," Bruce grimaced.

Tony waved his apology off with one flapping hand. "It happens, we fix it. Now focus; we're about to unlock the roommate upgrade on Captain America. So first, we need to get all his stuff over here. Usually I like to leave that to the movers, but there's half a block of demolished tenements in the way, so... what, agent, do you have something to share?" He turned an accusing finger on Coulson and his patiently amused look 

"SHIELD has had cleanup teams on the site since last night," he said, not bothering to hide his smirk, "HYDRA left a lot of dangerous tech lying around. We don't like for stuff like that to fall into civilian hands."

"Pshyeah, because SHIELD's hands are so much more responsible," Tony scoffed. "All right then, fine. I'm going to hire a team to steal all Steve's stuff back from SHIELD HQ, and bring it back here-"

"Because what could possibly go wrong with that?" Bruce put in, covering his face with his hands.

Coulson finished his coffee and stood up. "Let me handle that, Stark. I actually have the clearance to redirect the salvage, and you'd hate it at Guantanamo Bay." Then he put the tablet away, and straightened his jacket with a tug. "In the meantime, since Captain Rogers is obviously _not_ here at Stark Tower with the two you, you'd better show me these living arrangements you've been bragging about."

Tony turned put a wounded hand over his arc reactor. "I don't _brag_!" Bruce coughed, and Tony glared him down. "Bragging implies exaggeration. Everything is exactly as awesome as I've been saying all along. And I should know from awesome, because I invented it."

~*~

Pepper picked up on the third ring, just like always. "In a meeting, Mr. Stark, make this quick."

"Never in my life," he returned the other half of their traditional greeting. "So, you busy?"

"Actually, yes," she sounded fondly exasperated, but that was as good as her shouting 'I love Tony Stark' from the rooftops, so he didn't let it weigh too heavily on his conscience. "As I said, I'm in a meeting with Interpol. Seems there's some Stark branded micro-cameras turning up on the black market in western Europe lately, and they want to know where they all came from."

"I can top that," he said, turning at the broken wall to pace back the way he'd come. "Fury's trying to kidnap Steve." 

There answered an appalled silence through the line. Then, "You've left some details out again, Tony," Pepper said, in that voice that made him think of lawyers and settlements and rescheduled appointments with boring people. "Why would Fury kidnap Steve? And kidnap him from where?"

"From here, Pep!" he cried, turning at the pile of stone and concrete to go back again. "And it's all because he wants to use Steve to make his superhero boy band only play the home arena now that his apartment's kind of collapsed."

"Fury's apartment collapsed?"

"No, _Steve's_ apartment! Keep up!" A pigeon flew in through the opened wall, but thought better of it when Tony kicked a chunk of drywall at its head. "So Steve's here at the Tower, and we're gonna keep him, but for right now I kind of have to play Three Card Monte with him until Fury sees reason. That might take awhile, given that he has no depth perception and all." He detoured around a light fixture and a tangle of wiring, and kicked half a bathroom sink out of his way as he passed. "So I need you to help me decide; Malibu, Chicago, or Dubai?"

Another long pause, then, "Tony, how drunk are you right now?"

He stopped, hand over his reactor. "Pepper! Unkind! I'm hurt! I'm also stone cold sober, which might be part of the problem. I should have a drink, good idea."

"First you need to put Steve on the phone," she said. "He can explain all this while you lubricate yourself."

Tony paused on his way to the door, chagrined. "Yeah. About that…"

"Anthony Stark, what did you do to Steve?"

"It wasn't me, it was HYDRA, I swear!" 

Of course, after that he couldn't get anything useful out of Pepper until he'd given up all the details -- a criminal misuse of their phone time, given that CNN already had most of the night's Brooklyn shenanigans on their web feed. And _that revelation,_ of course, required the standard ten minutes of Not Talking About Bullet Holes before Tony could finally wrench Pepper back around to relevant topics.

"Other than when he was with the SSR during the war, has Steve actually _been_ out of New York?" was the first thing she could think of to ask.

Tony felt safe in rolling his eyes as he made another circuit of the post-Hulk apartment. "He went all over the damned country with his star spangled war bonds show," he reminded her.

"Touring a place is different than _being_ there, Tony," she reminded him back in the same tone. "And I think if it was me who'd just lost my home for the second time in a year and a half, and who was going to have to wake up someplace where I hadn't gone to sleep, I think I might like for that place to feel something like familiar, if possible."

"SHIELD tried that when Steve first thawed out. He saw through their fake, freaked the hell out of about twenty agents, and got halfway down Broadway before they caught up to him. Not an awesome day on anybody's books."

She actually chuckled then. "I didn't say to gaslight him, Tony, I just said he might take all this better if he was in New York City when he woke up."

"Pep, haven't you been listening? He can't stay here, or Fury will-"

"I didn't say he should stay in the Tower," she cut him off. "I said he should stay in the City. Some place older though, more traditional in the way it feels. Some place that was actually standing when he was around the first time…"

And Tony got it, yeah. He just couldn't quite believe it would be Pepper, _his_ Pepper who would actually suggest it. Coulson he could have called, but not Pep. Still… "That might actually work," he had to admit. "That might work really well. If it doesn't get somebody killed first. Thanks Pep! You're a genius!"

"Twelve percent of one, anyway," she agreed, and ended the call before he could mention that her genius was definitely of the evil variety, and was definitely not only used for the good of all. But she knew that anyway. It was one of her many charms.

~*~

"Jesus, I'm starting to really hate that goddamned super serum," Tony grunted, straightening to press both hands into the small of his back. "I swear he's not even made of meat."

The man in question lay face up across the limo's back seats, his head lolling as from the other side, Happy struggled to get his feet in. "Um, Boss?" the chauffer gurgled, shoving and getting nowhere. "Little help here?"

"Cement," Tony decided, leaning in to grab one of Steve's shoulders as Bruce levered himself across from the facing seat and grabbed the other. "He's full of cement and… good intentions. And…" He threw his weight back and Steve slid grudgingly along the leather, "… pie!"

"Pie," Happy agreed from his knees. "Cement pie. Boss, can we please never have to carry this guy around again?"

"Hey, Iron Man could have got him there on his own," Tony protested, dropping Steve's arm and shutting the door on his side. Okay, there might have been a few balance issues to contend with, given comatose burden of cement pie and all, but that was why Tony had Jarvis running flight control, wasn't it?

"Yeah, because it's not like SHIELD tracks you in that Suit or anything. You might as well hold a press release," Bruce panted, sagging into the seat and swiping his shirtsleeve across his forehead. "I'm just surprised he didn't wake up at all. I mean, this isn't coma; his vitals are too steady and pronounced for that, but it's not like we were exactly gentle with him just now."

"Well, that's our Cap, I guess," Tony said, sliding into the limo next to Bruce. "He can take a pounding and not lose a wink." That had sounded a lot dirtier than Tony meant it to, which was annoying. If he was going to be a lewd bastard, Tony preferred to do it on purpose. "Happy, man, you all right over there? You need a Red Bull or something?"

Happy, still on his hands and knees, just shook his head, muttering something that could have been a cough, or could have been 'fucking superheroes' as he climbed to his feet.

Tony coughed back at him, and if it sounded just a little bit like the word 'salary,' well it was no fault of his, was it? He had a bad heart, after all. And if Bruce rolled his eyes and made a face like he smelled a fart and didn't want to encourage the dealer by laughing, well at least he was quiet about it. Which was okay, actually, because the repair contractor returned Tony's call before Happy had even got the limo out of the garage, and on a whim, Tony decided to take the call rather than let Jarvis field it.

"Not everyone knows how to deal with it, you know," Bruce ventured once the call was done and the Contractor's calendar was fixed to Tony's liking. 

"Concrete?" Tony asked, reaching across Bruce to get at the minibar and his single malt selection. "Oh, I know it. It seems pretty straightforward until you have to factor windshear into things. And when you get above twenty floors, the building codes get just ridiculous."

"No, Tony, I meant this." He waved around him, taking in the limo, Happy, and the drink in Tony's hand, as if they were all somehow linked. "The way you are with money."

Tony kept the scowl off his face. "Generous?"

"Casual," Bruce answered in that too-gentle way he had, like he thought everyone else might have their own Other Guy just waiting to bust out and go green in the bad way. "Like it doesn't matter to you."

"Oh, believe me, it matters," Tony said, and Bruce nodded at once.

"I know it does. You wouldn't live like this if you didn't care about it; the cars, the houses, the suits," he smiled deeper, more genuine. "The Suits. And it's not like you don't work for what you have; I've lived with you for nearly a year now, and I've seen how little you sleep. It's just that money means something different to most other people than it does to you."

Tony stared at him, caught between annoyance and curiosity. As usual, curiosity won, but that was because curiosity was a cheating bitch and always played dirty. "All right, Swami," Tony said at last, slouching in his seat and propping his feet on Steve's shoulder, "Share your wisdom; what's so different between the two?"

Bruce opened the minibar and pulled out a can of ginger ale. "Well, to you it's a tool and a resource, but most of all, it's a constant. You've only _not_ had it once in your life, and then for only three months. To you, money means freedom." Tony huffed into his glass, a little surprised to have been read so well. "But to other people it means safety, and it's a terrifying variable that can desert them at any point, and leave them living in a cardboard box. And when someone like you throws big chunks of it at them, it usually doesn't mean freedom, but obligation." Bruce shrugged and took a sip. "Not everyone knows how to accept your levels of generosity, Tony."

"Oh, trust," Tony scoffed, remembering a parade of faces, beautiful and hungry. "I know _plenty_ who have no problem with it."

Bruce held up a finger. "I said 'accept.' That's not the same as 'exploit.' And I'm talking about us; your teammates, your friends, not about the mushrooms that sprout wherever a man like you takes a dump." Tony had to chuckle at that one, as much from his buddy's rare flash of rudeness as from the surprisingly apropos mental image that accompanied the analogy.

"So why doesn't it bother you then?" Tony asked, interested despite himself. "I mean, you've never acted like you think I'm trying to buy you."

"To be honest, I might have, if not for General Ross." Bruce smiled at the shocked look Tony couldn't keep off his face. "Something about having a guy trying to cash in on a research grant by having you dissected makes it really easy to get past the idea of everyone having their price. And having the Other Guy watching over my shoulder means I can pretty much walk away from anybody who thinks I _can_ be bought, and they can't do much to stop me." He shrugged as though it didn't bother him at all. "I've lived rough before, lived completely without money of any kind. Barter currency's alive and well in most places in the world if you just ask right, and I've learned a lot of ways to ask. Money doesn't have a lot of power over me." 

He tipped a significant glance at Steve, whose head had lolled over toward them as though he was listening. "A guy like Steve, though… he's seen the great depression, gangsters, bread lines, the dust bowl, charity kitchens, wartime rationing… His time in the army might have actually been the most financially stable time of his life. I can't even begin to guess what all that would do to a guy's relationship with money." 

_You're a billionaire playboy who can spend more in a week than I made in twenty years of my life, plus seventy years of interest while it sat in the bank._ Steve spoke up from Tony's memory, as if to agree. But Tony hadn't been convinced then, and he wasn't convinced now either.

"But you think I should be careful with him." It wasn't a question, so Tony didn't make it sound like one.

"I think that being too forcibly generous might have been where Fury lost him," Bruce agreed. "That, and having too many undefined conditions and strings attached to that generosity. I know that's one of the reasons why I'd rather live with you." He didn't have to mention the cage on the Helicarrier. They both thought of it at once.

"You know what I think?" Tony ventured, finishing his drink and sucking an ice cube into his mouth to chase the flavor. "I think the Cap does what he wants." Bruce cocked an eyebrow at that, clearly not convinced, and Tony grinned as the limo turned off the pavement and onto thick, crunching gravel. "Ah, I see he fooled you with that good little soldier act of his too, didn't he? But he was the one that broke into SHIELD's secret stash of WMDs, wasn't he? And it was his idea to have Thor take the tesseract with him when he took Loki back to Asgard. Moving to Brooklyn was just another way for Steve to tell Fury 'you're not the boss of me.'" 

Bruce let out a laugh, looking surprised that it escaped him. Tony saluted it with his tumbler as he crunched the last ice cube down to pieces. "So the way I figure it, Cap will do what he wants. I can roll with that, because I'm pretty sure he's gonna want what I want to give him." And dammit, there went another accidental lewd bastard moment. He waggled his eyebrows and hoped to make it look deliberate.

Bruce, bless his irradiated little heart, kicked it back into play with an innocent stare. "And just what is it you want to give him, Tony?"

"Oh look, we're here!" Happy cried from the front seat as he killed the engine. "And look, there's that nice Mrs. Sloane with a wheelchair so we don't have to carry Captain Cement. What a lucky break!" He threw open the door and was out of the car in record time, leaving Bruce and Tony to laugh at him in peace.

"Does it really bother him that much," Bruce asked, watching Sloane direct Happy in pushing one of those old style wooden wheelchairs down the manor's steps. "That you like guys too, I mean?"

"Nah. He just thinks I'm going to cheat on Pepper, is all," Tony replied, opening the limo doors on his side and gesturing for Bruce to do the same. "She thinks its sweet, I think it's funny, mostly. Happy thinks it'll all end in tears and me getting a punch in the head from him if I make her cry." He gave a 'what are you gonna do' shrug, then put on his very best dazzling smile and climbed out of the limo. 

"Mrs. Sloane," he cried, arms wide as if he expected a hug. "Glad you got my message."

"Mr. Stark. Your computer does know how to access a telephone line, yes," she replied coolly, setting the chair's brakes beside the car. "However its mastery of directory services leaves something to be desired. It seems to have mistaken this house for an invalid care hospice." She glanced inside the car, and tsked. "Or a rehab center."

"He's just asleep, ma'am," Bruce assured her with a smile. "Promise."

She gave him the skeptical look that had shot down a thousand airtight excuses, and waved Happy back into the car with a nod. "Well then you'd better either wake him up, push him upright, or pour him into the chair by yourselves. Legs first... no, not like that. Oh, for the love! Put his feet back inside and turn his back to the door or you'll drop him on his face! Honestly, have none of you done this before!"

Tony kept his mouth very tightly shut, and willed Happy to do the same. Sloane gave him a knowing glance though, and summoned him around the car with a flick of her hand. "Mr. Stark, come here and lift his shoulders. Doctor, you have his feet. Hogan, get out of there and take his knees. Now, lift together on my mark: One, two-"

"Three!" Tony gritted, and for a moment he was too concerned with inertia, mass, gravity, torque, and his aching back to pay attention to much else. But then Cap slid neatly into the chair, which creaked a little, but took his weight like a champ. Tony pressed a hand to the center of his broad chest, holding Steve in place while he caught his breath. Only then did he notice the look of stunned recognition on Sloane's face. 

"You know him?" It made sense. Project Rebirth had been based in New York, and Howard had lived here at the mansion while he was working on it. They'd been friends, hadn't they, Howard and Steve? Had Sloane been with the Stark family even back then? She'd kept to the kitchen every time the Avengers had come over here for Coulson's dance lessons, so she actually could have missed spotting Steve before this.

But Sloane cut him a cold glance and shook her head, saying, "No, Mr. Stark, we are _not_ acquainted," in a voice so tight with dislike that Tony had to wonder, suddenly, if leaving Steve in her care was actually a good idea.

"But you do recognize him," he pushed, digging a pair of straps out from the folds of Steve's borrowed t shirt, and fastening them around his chest so he'd stay sitting upright.

Sloane nodded, and Tony watched her school her face to neutral. "I've seen photographs."

Which totally made sense. Steve's face had been everywhere during the war, after all. He propped his arm on the wheelchair's tall back to look down at her with a knowing grin. "That's right, Captain America was the mascot of the USAS, wasn't he? Bet you and the other WACs had his posters all over your barracks back in the day."

"I was never a WAC, Mr. Stark," she replied, clearly trying to light Tony on fire with her mind.

He upped his grin and cocked his head as Bruce climbed out of the limo dusting his hands. "Well what were you then, Sloane? A WAV? Motor pool? Combat nurse?"

"Eight years old, Mr. Stark," Sloane replied, and actually rolled her eyes. Bruce stifled a laugh, but Tony wanted to cheer outright.

Instead, he nodded wisely. "Right. So armored infantry then."

She turned her back on him. Happy, who'd been watching the exchange with a grin, flinched back from the look she turned his way. "Please see to the car, Hogan," she said as she headed for the front steps.

"Intelligence?" Tony called, moving behind the wheelchair to push, "Counterintelligence? Sniper? I bet you were a sniper, weren't you?"

From the doorway, Sloane at last turned back in the doorway, a tight, tiny smirk lighting her eyes as she said, "You're thinking of a different war, Mr. Stark." Then she turned on her heel and disappeared into the house, leaving Tony and Bruce to sort out the physics of getting all of Cap plus a hundred pounds of antique wheelchair up the front steps on their own.

Genius didn't help nearly as much with that as it should have done.


	3. 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It has been brought to my attention that this chapter really needs to have a warning note. It contains themes of voyeurism without consent, and creeper behavior, however benignly intended. If these themes disturb or offend you, please proceed with caution and self-awareness.

"Rough day, Stark?" Natasha's voice startled Tony almost out of his sulk, and from the smug look she gave him as he rolled his head back against the sofa to watch her stroll into the kitchen, she knew it, too. 

"What gave me away?" he asked.

She got a bottle of water from the fridge and saluted him with it. "Other than the fact that it's just now ten in the morning and you're already hitting the bar? Surely you're not regretting letting me move in here that much already…"

"Natasha Romanov, you are a skilled, intelligent, and deadly woman, and you're also wearing cutoffs and a Frankie Goes to Hollywood t shirt in my kitchen -- I regret nothing about you, except possibly that you would rather kill me than satisfy certain curiosities which I, as a shallow male, understandably have." She quirked about point ten per cent of a smile his way, and came around the sofa to perch beside him. 

"So why have you been sitting there looking like someone keyed your Audi for the past ten minutes?"

"Keyed my _Audi_?" 

She gave a shrug in answer to his laughter. "It's not like you have a puppy to kick." And yeah, as a matter of fact, Tony _did_ immediately think of Bruce, but he kept that to himself, thank you. "Lack of mania is a big tell with you, Stark," she said, nudging his knee with one foot. "So spill. What's eating you?"

He sighed, less interested now in laughing. "Where do you wanna start? With Hammer Industries' lawyers trying to bullshit their way into making me give them the plasma guns HYDRA stuck onto the drones they attacked this place with two days ago?"

Natasha gave him a look of frank disgust. "Salvage is yours by right if they fell on your property. If Hammer has a legitimate claim on those guns, then they're also courting indictment for colluding with terrorists. As you must know."

"Oh, I know it," Tony grumbled. "They're just throwing shit and seeing if it'll stick, but-"

"But Potts is the one who's still on speaking terms with Stark Industries' Legal department," she cut him off, cracking open her water and taking a long drink. "She'll handle it just fine."

He gave her all he could muster of a tired glare, which wasn't much, on account of his being tired and all. "Potts is handling Interpol right now. And probably not talking to me either." 

That got an eyebrow, then after a moment, a nod. "The Louvre." Odd how that didn't seem to be a question.

"You're welcome." Tony slouched low against the sofa cushions, propped his booted feet on the catalogue-covered coffee table, and cradled his drink against his belly. The arc reactor's glow caught in the ice and cast wavering shapes in blue and green across the ceiling. 

"All right," she said, "What else?" She did that eyebrow thing again when he slanted a look her way. "You did say 'start', so what's next in the queue?"

"How about that the INS is going to deport two of Cap's neighbors?" Tony offered, already imagining the stricken look on Steve's face when he found out that he'd saved the old couple's lives only to have them handed over to Von Doom's thugs. "The old guy, Dhirac? He was one of Doom's toy makers before he got out. Now the Latverian embassy is claiming him as a 'national asset'."

"That, I did know," she replied, and at least had the grace not to sound happy about it. "SHIELD was working on a way to recruit them before this happened. His husband is a virologist, working with the CDC on malaria, did you know?" 

Tony hadn't known. "Great. So we throw a weapons designer back to a dictator who will either kill him or put him back to work making Doombots, and while we're at it, we throw away his partner, who might actually do some _good_ in the world! Because God for-fucking-bid two old men should live their lives in peace around here!"

He heard her slide against the sofa, skin squeaking on leather, imagined her gathering her legs up beneath her to face him. "You know that Agent Hill is working on that, right?" she asked. He rolled his head to look at her, surprised. She nodded. "She's got a team brainstorming it right now. Last I heard, they were leaning toward medical complications and a tragic hospital death. MRSA moves so fast in the elderly, you know." 

"It's creepy how your face doesn't move when you say things like that," he told her, just to watch her not react.

"Malibu or Atlanta," she said.

Tony blinked. "Tacos or barbecue?"

She broke off another corner of smile. "Relocation. Mr. Sulwen said neither of them does very well with the cold anymore. He'd like to move somewhere warmer. Stark Industries has research campuses in both cities, as does the CDC. So either would be a good fit for an older couple of contractors who have just relocated from back east, right?"

He stared at her, loving how the words made some of the sick tightness in his gut uncurl. But aloud, he only grumbled, "It never gets old how SHIELD shows it appreciates my contributions to world peace by infiltrating my employment roster without my permission."

"You're welcome." She took a drink. "Next?"

So that was how it was gonna be, was it? Tony jutted his chin at her and put his feet on the floor. "The apartments suck. Oh, don't give me that eyebrow, you've been downstairs, so I know you've seen them. The beds are in, and the computer and AV stuff, but I don't _do_ decorating, and Pepper's busy Interpolling, and the contractors are almost done, but the real, actual furniture's all… Fuck, I just don't know what normal people like."

"Normal people?" she asked, either amused or pissed off, he couldn't really tell. "So, you're letting someone none of us have met move into the tower too?"

"Okay, for values of normal meaning people who aren't me," he said. "I mean, I know what the Widow adds up to in the field, and I know a few random details about you personally, but how the hell does a ballet fixation, black leather, acrobatics, virtual kleptomania, tasers, speaking Latin, and the ability to choke a guy out with his own ear-hair add up to any idea what kind of sofa you prefer?" 

She made a tiny noise beside him; something that might have been a snicker, or a disgusted sigh, or her choking on her water, but when he looked over, her face was impassive. Except for that eyebrow, which he chose to take for a sign that she wasn't offended enough to hurt him. He ventured on. "So then take that little mental puzzle and multiply it by a factor of Thor, and you can begin to see my problem. These things are either going to turn out looking like college dorm rooms, or a sanatorium." 

"Both oddly apropos, considering our lineup," Natasha mused, tapping her water bottle against her full lips. "However if you start by throwing out the IKEA catalogue and just let us choose our _own_ furnishings, the problem will solve itself." She smirked, and the rest of her expression caught up to the eyebrow for a second. "Genius."

All of which neatly sidestepped the real problem, which was that Tony had no goddamned idea how to even offer to furnish Steve's room in a way that would make the man to feel like he could call it home. Sure, he could try and say 'order what you like, and I'll pay for it,' but would he even get past the prices at all before he decided Tony was somehow trying to buy him? Or lease him? God _damn_ Bruce for bringing all that bullshit up anyhow. Even trying to find the words to explain that particular dilemma made Tony feel ridiculous -- like a total girl, except for the part where he had a cock and no tits to speak of. 

For her part, Natasha sat still and watched him, patient and cruel as any cat beneath its birdbath. Like she had all the time in the world to wait while Tony got around to telling her about the big one: the most cheerfully sadistic 'fuck-you' the world had seen fit to send him all week: the one he hadn't intended to tell anybody at all if he could possibly help it, because of how badly it just fucking _sucked_. It was the real weight on his chest, and so of course it was the hardest to ignore. 

So, of course, when Tony tried to think of some other bullshit to offer into the silence, what came out of his mouth was the unvarnished truth. "Steve's bike is trashed."

She looked appalled for a second, then blinked it away. "The one-"

"My dad built for him, yeah." He sighed, and slumped back to his earlier posture; head back, legs propped. This time he balanced the tumbler on his forehead, just to give himself something to focus on besides shattered steel and chrome. "Apparently one of the big selling points to that apartment in Brooklyn was that someone dug a parking garage underneath it. Steve's bike was in there when the whole fucking place came down on top of it. SHIELD delivered it in a crate about an hour ago."

Her long, slow intake of breath was as good as a scream to Tony's back-brushed nerves. "But you can fix it." He was secretly warmed by how she didn't make it a question. "You can rebuild it-"

"Stronger… faster… better… not so much, no." The ice-chilled tumbler settled into the ache against his brow like it belonged there. "Howard's bike doesn't run on serum and lights and good intentions. It's a machine. A beautiful, powerful, one of a kind machine, and now it's smashed to hell and gone. Fuck, I think there's some actual rebar mixed in with the pieces they sent over, twisted up so tight they couldn't get them apart."

"So?" she challenged, "Your armor's been trashed over and over. I've seen you take a cutting torch to get the pieces off you before. But you always fix it, rebuild it, repair it. And that armor is far more complicated than-"

"The armor's _mine!_ " Tony snatched the glass from his head and lunged forward to bang it down onto the table. " _I_ designed it. _I_ built it. _I_ know it, down to the goddamned flex-solders and processing chips. I know the Suit better than I know my own skin, but that's…" he sighed, scrubbing his hands into his hair. "The bike is _not_ mine. She's Howard's baby. As far as I've been able to find, she's the only one he ever designed, or built. If he saved the fucking plans anywhere, I haven't been able to find them so I don't have anything to tell me where to begin, or how to proceed. The only thing I can do is finish destroying her and hope his design starts to make sense before she's too far gone."

Natasha made that sound again, short and thick and low in her throat, and this time when Tony glared at her she didn't bother to hide her smirk. "I can't decide whether it's funnier that you're having a crisis of engineering conscience, or a dick measuring contest with your dead father," she said, uncoiling just enough to reach across and grab his hand.

He totally did _not_ flinch and try to pull back when she tugged it toward her. He did, however, protest. "Hey, don't break that, I really need the full set!"

"Medical prostheses can do wonders, I'm told," she replied, spreading his fingers between her own and peering at his palm. Then she tilted her head, and considered it from another angle, and Tony absolutely, categorically could _not_ restrain the bark of laughter that followed.

"Seriously?" She flicked a glance at him, then went back to staring. "No, you are actually, and for real sitting there with a straight face while pretending to read my _palm_?" 

She shrugged and traced a long curve around his thumb, stopping to gently tap it at several points. "Learned palmistry for a cover identity awhile ago. You'd be surprised how superstitious Russian Mobsters are." She turned his hand to the side, peered at the base of his pinky finger, and her eyebrows went up. "Huh…"

His laughter surprised him, not nearly as toxic when it spilled out of him as he'd thought anything could be that day. "One word about my 'heart line,' and you are totally getting a used futon instead of a sofa, Romanov." The curl of her lips as she turned his hand and traced another line was fearless, and he kind of loved her a tiny bit for that. Not so much that he could buy this gypsy tea room claptrap, but a little, anyhow. "So what do your Russian mobsters have to do with me and my entirely non-mystical hand, exactly?" He asked, watching her trace a brace of lines that he hadn't noticed formed a small star beneath his ring finger until just then.

"They're almost as superstitious as billionaire playboy philanthropists, apparently," she answered, and folded his hand back on itself to set it onto his knee with a pat.

"Ouch," Tony said, glaring. "Also, untrue."

"Mm hmm," she purred, sipping at her water. "Which is why you're paralyzed with indecision over having to dissect those pulse-guns from the HYDRA drones to figure out how they work, isn't it?" She cocked her head and did the eyebrow thing again. "Or are you crying into your scotch because Hammer's engineering department wouldn't pick up when you called to ask for their plans?"

Ouch squared. Worse yet, actually a little funny. Still, "Not the same thing," he warned her.

"Not a different thing," she answered. "Not really. It's a broken machine, Stark, no matter who it built it in the first place, or to whom it belongs now. Anything more than that, you're laying onto it yourself. " The fact that she didn't _say_ the word 'superstition' again didn't take any of the sting out of her words.

"You're actually trying to have the 'sometimes a cigar is just a cigar' conversation with me?" he demanded, "You do know that Freud is not exactly considered feminism-friendly these days, right?" 

She actually laughed at that. "I leave perverted, incestuous Austrian psycho-theory to people who actually remember their parents. All I'm saying is that it's Steve's bike in that crate you're so scared of, not your damned childhood. And if you put it together again and make it run, it'll be Steve's bike that you'll have rescued from oblivion, not Howard Stark's legacy. And you'll have done it all out of the goodness of your arc reactor." 

"It's a very good arc reactor," he said thickly, patting its casing with pride.

"Without peer," she said, not quite agreeing. Then she smirked, and nudged his knee with her foot again. 

He slanted a look at her, and plucked an ice cube from his empty glass to suck on. "So aside from a dose of super spy tough love for your host and landlord, was there something you needed today, Agent Romanov?"

"No, tough love would be where I dislocate your shoulders so you'll be able to pop them out of joint at will later on," she grinned, reaching into her back pocket. Tony was beginning to think he knew her well enough to tell the difference between a grin and a threat of dismemberment, anyhow. "I actually came upstairs to bring you your surplus brain."

Tony's stomach lurched as she drew out his Starkphone and offered it on her flat palm. It was all he could do not to snatch it, even while he was feeling his own empty pocket with the other hand. "Oh my god, where did you-? I didn't even-! I _never_ leave my phone behind!"

"I know," she replied. "That's what had me worried. It was ringing away on your workbench down in the shop, and you were nowhere in sight, so I-"

"Wait, wait, wait." He waved her silent. "You were in my workshop? How the hell did you get into my workshop? Nobody's allowed in my workshop unescorted but Pepper, and she only gets to go in sometimes! Jarvis, why did you let this woman into my workshop and not tell me?!"

"I'm sorry, sir, she used the correct security override code. Also, you muted my speaker function approximately two hours and forty three minutes ago, leaving me without the means to notify you of anything short of an emergency."

"Update protocols!" Tony barked, glaring at the sensor, "Strange assassin women in my workshop when I am not there constitutes a goddamned emergency! Effective immediately!"

"Give him a break, Stark," Natasha said, smirking. "There are at least six ways to get into your shop that wouldn't have triggered your security at all. Clint's bound to find at least six more that I missed too, and Thor or Rogers could bust through that armored glass down there in about twenty seconds if either of them wanted to. You may have trouble differentiating friend from foe, but your AI's got the concept down."

"Boundaries," Tony said, entirely aware that he didn't have a lot of room to talk on the subject, but not caring even one tiny little bit. "We're totally going to have a family meeting about boundaries once everyone's moved in."

"And about cameras, privacy, and the consequences of recording my movements without permission too."

He didn't flinch. He totally did not flinch. "The cameras are for security reasons," he said, folding his arms across his arc reactor. She didn't look convinced, but she also didn't look quite like she was planning to kill him at that very moment, so he figured that might be okay.

"So. When's Barton going to be moving in?" he asked after a moment.

"Tonight," she accepted the distraction in the spirit it was intended. "That's actually why I came looking for you; there's no food in my kitchen, and I figure there's none in his either. So since I'm ordering pizza for us, I thought I'd ask if you and Banner wanted to kick in and join us."

"You're offering pizza to scientists. Even you must know that's a foregone conclusion." Then he drew up as an unpleasant idea occurred. "Do I have to carry boxes? Or furniture?" he asked, eyeing her dubiously.

"I thought you had robots for that," she replied.

"Well I do, but Dummy's scared of Bruce right now, so I don't think I can get him to help. And I'm just gonna say right now that if anybody tries to recruit the one called, aptly, Butterfingers for moving duty, I will not be held responsible for the breakage."

"Another call for you, sir," Jarvis interrupted just as Tony's hip pocket vibrated with a klaxon ringtone he'd damn sure never heard before, let alone assigned to anybody he'd trust enough to give the direct access to his personal phone.

"Jesus, who the hell...?" he grumbled, pulling the phone out and keying it silent before he'd even registered the picture on the screen. Then he registered it, and his brain stripped a few gears on its way from pizza to what the FUCK? 

"Oh, that's the same number that called earlier," Natasha mused, leaning close to glance at the photograph that had stolen Tony's ability to breathe. "Cute kid, by the way. Who is he?"

"...Me." The truth slipped out while Tony's brain was still grinding metal over the sight of his mother, young, blonde and smiling on the Mansion's front steps as she cuddled her toddler on her lap and leaned cosily into the arms of... He keyed the call to speaker and put the phone to his ear. "April Sloane?"

"Mr. Stark," answered exactly the voice he'd expected; chilly, impatient, and God help him for a delusional fool, but almost fond? 

He swallowed, and somehow instead of demanding to know how the hell she'd gotten hold of a number so private that even Nick Fury the Spymaster didn't know how to dial it directly, he found himself asking, "Is everything all right over there?"

"I am not a nurse, Mr. Stark," she answered, as if that was any kind of an answer at all. "And I am not inclined to explain to your guest why his host is across town when he wakes up in a strange place without any clothes on."

"That was Bruce's idea," Tony murmured, feeling color rise in his face at Natasha's frankly delighted stare as she eavesdropped with neither scruple nor shame. "He said it would be safer if there was less fabric for Steve to get tangled in while he was-"

"I honestly am incapable of caring less which one of you thought of it, Mr. Stark," Sloane clipped, banging something about in the background. "it's been nothing but awkward since you left him here, and it will not become any less so once he's awake enough to ask about it. So may I suggest you amend the situation?"

"Umm... hang on." Tony muted the line. "Jarvis, scan those crates from Steve's apartment. Did any of his clothes make it over here, or do I have to go shopping for him?" He knew he did not imagine the glint of excitement those words roused in Natasha's eyes, and personally he couldn't blame her -- who wouldn't want the chance to stage a forcible intervention on Steve's chinos-and-plaid-shirts addiction? 

"Done, sir. I have detected an army issue duffel bag and a foot locker in the crates, both of which seem to contain men's clothing in the Captain's size."

Tony unmuted the phone again. "All right, I'll bring something by in the morning."

"You'll bring something by this evening," Sloane ground back. "Or else you'll send it along with Hogan or your doctor friend, because I will not have that man parading around this house all night in nothing but that infernal grin of his!" Tony had never heard anybody refer to Cap's poster boy face as 'infernal' before. The novelty of it, and of hearing April Sloane sounding actually ruffled for once, almost distracted Tony from the critical data point. Almost.

"Wait," Tony lurched to his feet. "Wait, Steve's waking up? I asked you to call me when he was waking up!"

"As I have, you will notice, done," she bit out.

"Yeah, well a little warning would have been nice," he griped back, heading for the elevator. 

Sloane's reply chilled at once "My vast experience in managing unconscious libertines does suggest to me that if you intend to be here when Captain Rogers wakes up, then you had best put your own trousers on, Mr. Stark, and get the hell about it!" 

Then she cut the call.

"I like her," Natasha said into the stunned silence which followed. "Can she come live with us too?"

~*~

For the first time in months, Sloane was not waiting at the Mansion's entrance when Tony arrived. This was probably a good thing, actually, because fighting his way through Midtown traffic at rush hour had put Tony into the kind of mood that would likely have got one of them killed, fired, or crying in a corner before it all wound down. Or any two of the three, possibly.

He'd left Happy out of things this time. Sloane's temper when it was actually roused and not just casually mean, wasn't something the poor guy deserved to weather, and anyway he was supposed to be picking up Pepper at the airport later on that night. Given that Tony couldn't really say how long Steve was going to take to finally wake the fuck up from his three day nap, he had no way of guessing how long this trip would tie Happy up if he made him come along. And Tony had absolutely _no_ intention of letting himself get stranded at the mansion with no way but a cab to get home.

Tony hefted Steve's duffel bag over his shoulder and headed for the front door, only pausing to think about keys once his hand was on the door latch. He never thought of unlocking doors anymore. Jarvis had effectively done away with his need for keys when wheels were not involved. Just thinking of Jarvis gave Tony a pang of longing. He wished he'd gone ahead and installed his AI a server in the manor already, no matter what Sloane thought of his accent. Having the eternally unflappable AI on hand at the old homestead would have made Tony's lingering road-resentment (because it didn't really qualify as road-rage in his book unless someone was actually on fire,) easier to ditch, and his brand of sarcasm was a lot gentler than Sloane's, too -- maybe she'd learn something from it. One way or another, having Jarvis around would have made Tony's job of calming the fuck down easier. And he needed to calm down, because as cathartic as the occasional shit mood could be, Tony really didn't think it would put Steve into a cooperative headspace to listen to the Avengers Tower Headquarters pitch if a Stark-snit was the first thing he had to deal with upon waking up. So yeah; chill pill necessary, Jarvis handy or not.

The door was locked however, and being completely NOT in the mood to go hunting under flowerpots and doormats for the keys, Tony swore to himself, dumped the duffel, and headed around the side of the house to see if Sloane was in the kitchen. That door would be easier to kick in if it came to that anyhow. But as Tony came around the corner of the greenhouse, a steady, rhythmic whacking noise distracted him as it echoed though the neatly trimmed back garden. It didn't sound like hammer blows, though it had a sharply metal sound buried in it; this was slower, with more time between one impact and the next, kind of like when Dummy got stuck in a code loop and took to bouncing his arm off the wall, or the workbench, or Bruce, or whatever was in reach. Concerned, Tony sped up, heading for the boxwood hedge that hid the kitchen garden from the tennis courts' view.

"Sloane?" He called, boots sliding on the gravel path as he came around the curve and nearly collided with the housekeeper… and her axe. "Whoa!" he called, hands out as startled, she half turned and hefted the axe like a pint sized lumberjack, "What the hell are you doing?"

She blinked, unmoving for all of a second, then she gave a brittle smile and straightened, settling the axe to her shoulder. "Mr. Stark. You're late." 

"And you're kind of freaking me out," he replied, settling his jacket and stepping discretely out of swinging range. "Tell me you don't greet all visitors this way!"

She huffed and turned back the way she'd come. "Visitors ring the bell," she said pointedly, "and they get a very different reception than do people who come creeping about the grounds without announcing themselves."

"And that happens often, does it?" Tony asked, following her through the neat herb and vegetable beds to where a stack of wood waited beside a hard-worn stump. Because _naturally_ his eighty year old psychotic financial ninja housekeeper split her own wood in the back garden.

Sloane turned him a wry glance and sunk the axe neatly into the stump. "This _is_ still New York City, Mr. Stark," was all she had to say as she bent to gather up the splits of wood.

"That's it, I am upgrading this place," Tony decided aloud. "And you can just cope with it, Sloane, because I do not want you feeding me tomatoes that have been fertilized with the composted bodies of missing thugs!"

"You know nothing about gardening, do you?" was her only reply.

"I note you make no denial," he answered, taking the full basket of wood out of her hands. "Seriously. It's time this place had a proper security system, and if I'm going to wire it for that, there's no reason not to go the whole way."

"You needn't bother for my sake," she said, and turned to lead the way to the kitchen. "I've managed well enough thusfar."

"Okay, that's not a 'no,' so I'm taking it for a yes. Now, do you have a preference for which room gets to house the servers, or should I choose one at random?"

Sloane made a sour face, but had a ready answer. "Howard's study is the most out of the way," she said, opening cupboards and getting down glasses. "It wouldn't matter overly to me what you chose to do in there, as I only go in the damned place to dust. You might as well take it over for your own bat-cave now that he won't want it again." 

Tony had to chuckle at that. "Batman's a goth kid on steroids. I'm more of a Superman type, wouldn't you say?" 

Her scowl quirked up for a second as she brought out a pitcher from the fridge and poured tea over the ice in both glasses. "Well, there have been times when I'd wondered if you were of this world," she said, shoving one of the glasses at him. "However that specimen you dumped in your mother's bed two days ago would better fit those qualifications. You'll have to make do with the part of Luthor, I'm afraid."

Tony reeled back, pressed his free hand to his arc reactor. "Ouch!" he said. "Also, unfair, since that evil genius gig was mostly Obidiah's fault, and I'm making up for it now. Anyway, I have MUCH better hair." She didn't laugh, but honestly he hadn't expected her to. He waited until she'd put the glass to her lips to ask, "So you wanna tell me why you hate Steve so much?" She gave Tony a carefully neutral glance, and he refused it with a frown. "No, don't front with me. You said 'specimen' like you were talking about something that needed to be killed with bleach and fire. So spill it. What's Steve done to deserve this?"

"What makes you think _his_ actions have any bearing on it?" she sniped. "I've told you that I never met the man. I've only lived for decades in the mess he left behind when he disappeared," and here, she cast a canny look over her shoulder and pinned Tony through the heart with it, "just as you have, as I'm _sure_ you recall."

Shit. So this was all about Howard and his lost Masterpiece, his Big Fish, his One That Got Away. The real ghost of Stark Manor; the one that had haunted Howard and by proxy the rest of his family, until all but Tony were dead. 

Tony sighed and put the tea down on the counter. "You can't blame Steve for that," he said, forcibly ignoring the memory of his own first reaction to the Captain when they'd met. "Dad's obsession wasn't his fault."

Sloane made a rude noise and set her own glass aside so she could bang things around in the sink. "I most certainly _can_ blame him, whether it's his fault or not. He's here, and convenient. What other criteria for blame has anyone in this house ever needed?" She turned a glare on him when Tony took an involuntary step back. "Oh, stop looking at me like that. I managed to be perfectly civil to every pimp, mistress and whore your father brought through this house, and it'll take more than a living legend to get the worst of me."

He actually had to smile at that, and following the imp of the perverse as he always did, he stepped close to Sloane's side to gather her into an awkward, one-armed hug. "You save your worst for me anyway, don't think I haven't noticed." He wasn't surprised when she shoved him away, but he was a _little_ surprised she didn't use her elbows, ninjitsu, or a cleaver to do it.

"Yes, well," she said, smoothing her hair straight and trying to look displeased, "You're family, or what passes for it. Now go and wake up your alien curio before he wanders out here in nothing but his cape. I've got work to do."

So knowing when he was banished, Tony left to do just that. And the weird part, which he didn't even realize until he'd made it all the way to the entry hall and unlocked the front door, was that somewhere between being threatened with an axe and compared to Lex Luthor, his bad mood had completely evaporated. 

"Well how 'bout that?" he mused, slinging Steve's duffel bag over his shoulder, and feeling lighter than he had since Hammer's lawyers had called him first thing that morning.

~*~

If asked, Tony couldn't have clearly said what it was about Steve that looked so much better now than before. His skin was the same pale peach that spoke of ancestors in cold places, the long summer light gilding each curve of muscle and bone where the sheets drifted low across his hips. Steve was certainly less chalky than when they'd tucked him into Maria's room, but not overly; there hadn't been _that_ much blood loss, Bruce had said.

But before it had been obvious that Steve was unconscious, and that made a bigger difference than Tony had expected. Now that he was just asleep, his sprawl looked effortless, majestic, not like a string-cut puppet flopped down from a great height. Now it looked like there was actually someone home -- a breath of presence in the in the swell of his ribs, shoulders and thighs spread wide to the mattress. His arm curled around one of the spare pillows, tucking it up tight along his side, under his cheek like cradling lover, and oh yeah. Yeah, Tony totally needed _that_ thought to make this whole thing more awkward, didn't he?

Tony took a deep breath and eased Steve's duffel bag to the floor so he could close the door with a half-guilty click. Okay, so he was apparently perving on his unconscious, 90 year old teammate -- no problem there, -- who just happened to be sleeping naked in his dead mother's bed. Yeah, that barely ticked the needle on the 'Ways That Tony Stark Is Fucked Up' meter, all things considered. He was good.

And really, how could anyone expect him to pass up this chance to inspect such a triumph of bioengineering while he could do it without getting a lecture? Say what you would about Steve's personality deficits, that body was a hell of a thing all on its own merit, and Tony considered himself something of a connoisseur in the merits of awesome bodies. He owed it to himself to take the time for a proper ogle.

Gravity, sweat, friction and three days' neglect had ganged up on Steve's usually neat hair, rendering it into bedhead of legendary proportions which just begged for a Facebook upload. Tony got out his phone and snapped a picture, labeling it 'Cap's perfect hair.' Then, taking care to keep out of startled-awake-freaked-out-supersoldier reach, he rounded the bed and crouched to get a shot of his big, dumb, adorable super-face. Three days' worth of stubble shadowed that lantern jaw of his, his eyes were gummed and crusted with sleep, and there was a gloss of what looked suspiciously like drool in the pillow creases on his cheek. It was utterly perfect.

That picture, Tony sent to Pepper, adding ' _Oh, what I could do if I had a Sharpie right now!_ ' by way of a caption.

Steve's eyes were flickering above the sweep of his lashes, tracing dreams of… hell, mom and apple pie? Nazis? Bald eagles? Chorus girls? Ice? What the hell would Tony know about Capcicle's dreams? His only hint was how those blond brows knit just a little at the middle, how his hand flexed around the pillow, how his breath snagged just a trace of moan as he shifted a leg and pulled the sheet nearly off himself.

Tony stood with a grin, adjusting the hang of his junk on the way up to his feet. Oh yeah. Cap's ass was officially _much_ nicer now. The only sign of their utterly fucked-up 'bonding experience' was a ragged flake of glue clinging to the peachfuzz on his thigh, and Tony was quite ready to ignore that in favor of uncontested staring rights. And photo dibs too, of course, because given the way he was sprawled, the odds of getting a glimpse of what Steve was packing in his old kit bag were pretty close to even. Not a jury in the world would blame him for not passing _that_ view up.

Tony brought up the camera app again, took a few furtive steps south, and then strangled a yelp in his throat, fumbling his vibrating phone from hand to hand until he caught it against his belly. He backed several steps as he set the phone to silent mode, absolutely, completely _not_ panicking, even though Steve was a combat soldier, and almost certainly had some kind of PTSD or other, so he was definitely going to wake up any second now and kick Tony's ass, or worse, subject him to the Wrinkle of Disapproval for ogling. 

Steve's breath caught, deepened into something like a stretch, the sunstruck muscles of his back rippling briefly before they settled, and all the air he'd dragged in escaped on a low, sleepy moan that made the hair on Tony's everything stand right up to attention and listen for more. But no more came, and there Tony stood with a pounding heart, a semi, and a text message pressed to his belt, and Jesus fuck, how was that even fair? Tony swallowed, adjusted his pants again and checked the phone. 

_'It's not worth it.'_ Pepper had added a photo of herself with that 'Tony Stark Is Walking The Edge' look he knew so well. 

_'You never let me have any fun,'_ Tony fired back, and sent her a long shot of Cap's king-sized sprawl. Even she couldn't be blind to the amusement potential of all that unwary nice-guy.

This time the reply was pretty much immediate; _'Remember our bargain,'_ read the caption under a photo of the Interpol logo in brass on a wall, _'If you start using your powers for evil, then so do I.'_

Tony grinned, fairly sure she hadn't meant for his mind to go straight to the gutter with that, but really, she should have known him better. Only before he'd gotten halfway into the first word of the reply, Steve had shifted in the bed, dragging even more of himself out from under the sheet as he made that soft, sleepy noise again. Tony completely forgot what he'd wanted to say, because that noise, somewhere between whimper, groan, and hum, wouldn't let him _not_ look, and oh fuck no… Steve did not just roll his hips into the mattress, he just didn't. And he wasn't curling that knee up higher over the pillow either, because then it would look like he was totally trying to fuck the bed linens, and in no fucked up universe would Tony be standing here, fully dressed and watching Captain Goddamned America getting off in his sleep.

Except for how he was. He totally was.

Tony's prick went from intrigued to hard-enough-to-pound-nails so quickly it actually kind of hurt, and with the sudden desertion of half his blood supply from its post in his brain, Tony utterly lost focus on his brilliant text message riposte to Pepper. He retained just enough sense not to type out ' _Gotta go now, Cap's humping the pillows,_ ' before he slipped his phone back into his pocket. He was pretty sure he knew which side of the evil/not so evil line Pepper would count this on, and his not so evil score had taken some hits lately.

But how the hell could virtue stand a fighting chance with Steve doing that slow, inexorable hip-roll, long sinews flexing and stretching across the hollow of his back like he had all the time in the world to savor a slow, loving fuck before waking the hell up? Like he could smell his lover's skin in the swell of the pillow against his soft, open lips? Like those low, pleased noises he kept on making were the only urgent thing about this? Fuck no. Tony's virtue started out with a steep handicap wherever Steve was concerned, and in this fight, he figured that throwing the towel in straight away was probably best for everyone.

He undid his belt and fly just enough to work a hand into his shorts, shivering as the brush of his own fingers made Tony's prick leap and throb against his grip. He tucked the waistband of his shorts under his balls, shivering as the elastic snugged them tight and hard against the base of his prick. Then he began to stroke, carefully at first, judging the length of his own fuse against Steve's long, lazy thrusts, and God, how big did he have to be to put that much back into each one? Tony shuddered, caught his lip between his teeth and begged himself to keep quiet for once in his fucking life and not to spoil this.

Because this was no businesslike wank to take the edge off between meetings, no bored-but-horny jerk off to fill up a few minutes while files loaded, oh no; this was gratuitous self-abuse at its guilt-riddled finest, and Tony meant to ride it all the way to the ground. He tightened his grip, half hoping the dry friction would hurt a bit, pull him back from the edge, but all it did was wind him up tighter, higher, and fuck, he was going to come too soon if Steve didn't-

Then Steve did. With a thin, needy whine and a sudden clench of his pillow, he followed the thrust of his hips into a taut, trembling curl. Tony pressed his back to the wall, gaze fixed to the sight, knees trembling as his orgasm crashed down over his head and his cock pulsed and pulsed in his fist.

Hoh lee shit. Now that _was_ pretty fucked up, Tony had to admit, easing his grip on his suddenly sensitive prick and trying not to giggle. Voyeurism was a new twist for him -- generally Tony didn't much want to watch anybody getting it on unless they were getting it all over him in the process. But this… Tony took a deep, shaking breath and eased his shorts back into place over his still-sticky cock. This just might change his mind about the spankbank potential of watching a brawny blond molest his bedding. Providing Cap didn't actually wake up and bust Tony staring at him with spunk all over his knuckles, of course, because hello, awkward!

Also, Tony didn't want to find out firsthand and un-armored how hard Cap could throw a punch. So he slipped into the bathroom to wash the evidence down the drain, and maybe wipe the just-come goofball glaze off his face as well, if he was lucky. He nudged the door to, but not closed behind him, but still heard Steve's sleepy, confused whuffle over the sloshing tap, and the slither of sheets over skin as he rolled over. Then came the sharp, clipped-off gasp of the soldier catching up to the man, and realizing that he didn't know where he was. A listening silence followed, dense and threatening. Steve had been dressed when SHIELD had him that first time, Tony knew. Would he make the same kind of break for freedom now he was naked? Nah. Not worth it, even for YouTube dibs.

"Morning, Sunshine," Tony called through the door, figuring that would be safest for all. "How you feeling?"

He heard the breath Steve had been holding escape all at once, and couldn't help grinning. See, Fury? _That_ is how it's done! Then the sheets rustled again, and a moment later Steve was pushing back the bathroom door, looking rumpled and chagrined with the linen wrapped in a half-assed toga around him. It took willpower Tony didn’t even know he had not to look down for the stain.

"Like I haven't used the john in a week," Steve said, glancing past Tony. "Could you, uhm…?"

"Oh. Yeah, no problem," Tony said, backing toward the door that joined Howard's suite to Maria's. "Be my guest. I, uh, brought some of your clothes if you want to shower or anything. Take your time. No rush. There's towels. I'll be, uh," he got the door open without looking behind him, and gestured vaguely in the direction of somewhere else with his free hand. "Yeah, so anyhow. See you when you're, y'know, clean."

Tony got the door safely between his mouth and the puzzled look on Steve's face, and managed not to bang his head against it in despair. _Well that could have gone better,_ he told himself as he turned to leave his father's room with perfectly measured, utterly un-hurried steps. But the annoyance at his cool's desertion didn't really stick through Tony's lingering endorphin buzz, and now that he had the benefit of first-hand experience, he would defy anybody with a pulse to stare that man in the nipples and still manage to get a coherent sentence out.

Because God _damn_ , science was awesome!

~*~

Logic dictated that since Steve hadn't been taking in any calories to fuel the serum's repairs during the past three days, he was probably going to be pretty hungry once he'd got himself cleaned up. And considering the frightening amount of food he was capable of putting away on an average day, Tony wasn't at all sure how far into that appetite Sloan's patience was going to make it. She did live by herself at the mansion, after all, and he had no reason to think she'd keep that kind of food on hand on a regular basis, skinny as she was.

He could order in pizza easily enough, of course, but Tony had a sneaking suspicion that the old housekeeper might actually kill him with her brain if he insulted her hospitality that way. Which could, admittedly, be awkward the next time SHIELD needed Tony to help save the world. Of course, Tony could also just haul Steve off to some restaurant or other, too. That would serve the dual function of fuelling Steve's neglected engines, and providing a veneer of public restraint that would keep the potential shouting to a minimum in case Steve managed to find something in Tony's plans to take personally and get pissed over. Cause it's not like _that_ happened all the time or anything.

He found himself heading for the kitchen anyway, and reasoned once he was pointed that direction, that it couldn't hurt to ask Sloane's opinion on things before he decided which to do. If nothing else, a shot of her sarcasm could help wipe any lingering uncool off Tony's face before Steve showed up, and he had to pretend he hadn't just watched the man having a wet dream. 

When he got there though, he found the question was moot. Either that, or… "You having a football team for dinner?" Tony asked, surveying the countertops crowded with vegetables, mixing bowls, spices and condiments, and the pot-covered stove breathing the scents of meat, garlic and wine into the air.

Sloane spared half a glare from the onion she was coolly vivisecting. "Chicken, actually. Long pork is gamy this time of year." Then she took another knife out of the block beside her and turned to hand it to Tony, grip first over her forearm as if it were a pistol. 

"I thought it was the challenged man's prerogative to choose the dueling weapons," he said, taking it gingerly.

The beginnings of a smile crept from beneath the tightness of her lips. "Not when a woman challenges, Mr. Stark, and not when you've turned up empty handed and underfoot in her kitchen at dinnertime," she answered archly. Then she nodded at a cutting board beside the sink. "Now go on and make yourself useful with that broccoli."

He examined the pile of green, bushy plants for a moment. The broccoli he was used to encountering was smaller, already cooked, and generally a lot less... shrubbery-like. "Not that I have anything against the vegetable," he admitted, "but what exactly am I supposed to be doing with this? Bonsai landscaping?"

"Cut it down for steaming," Sloane answered, scooping the onion out of her way and starting on a pile of carrots.

"Right, and that means what, exactly?" he said, picking up a bunchy stalk and examining it critically, "'Cause I don't see a boiler coupling anywhere on this thing."

"Tsk. And you call yourself an engineer," Sloane sighed. Turning briskly, she edged him out of her way, snared the knife out of his hands and demonstrated the cuts. "Like so, and so. About this far down the stem. Not smaller than this, and not so large that you wouldn't want to see a headline photo of yourself trying to put it into your mouth."

Tony grinned. "I've seen headline shots of me putting _far_ worse things than broccoli into my mouth before."

Sloane set the knife down beside the green pile she'd made of the broccoli-tree with a snap and a glare. "As have I," she agreed and returned to her carrots. "Still, the humiliation one is willing to inflict on oneself ought never to be equated with how one may treat a guest. Otherwise one cannot expect said guest to return."

Tony nodded, and got started on the next head of broccoli; working in silence for awhile and musing that in the case of this particular guest, Sloane might prefer it that way. "I don't really remember Dad having guests," he surprised himself by saying after a few moments. "I mean, people who came over wanting things from him, sure, but not..." he gestured around the kitchen, pointing out the food preparations, but meaning far more. "Not guests in the way that Steve is a-"

"Friend," Sloane finished his sentence without looking up. "No, I don't recall Howard having friends either. Contacts, resources, obligations... employees," and oh, but she made that word sound bitter. "But not what I would call friends. Honestly, I'm not sure he was capable."

 _Steve called him his friend._ Tony thought, and wondered suddenly how much of that had been Steve's efforts to be accepted by the SSR, and how much of it had been Howard keeping tabs on his favorite, most successful project, like any engineer would. But if Steve was just a project, then why would Howard build him that bike? And why spout off all the stories whenever Tony caught him too drunk to work, but still sober enough to talk? Why the yearly expeditions to search for the crash site in the arctic? Why secretly preserve everything Steve had owned, never knowing if he'd return?

"Maybe," he mused quietly, finishing the last of the broccoli, "Maybe he just didn't know what to do with friends if everybody just wanted him around for his inventions and his inheritance. Maybe he didn't know how to deal with people at all, and that's why he always hid in his workshop when Mom had parties or dinners. Maybe the machines were just... simpler after..." _After everything he'd lost..._

Tony didn't register the silence for a long moment, but when he did look up, he found to his surprise that Sloane was not staring at him, but rather down at her cutting board, her knife still and waiting. Then as he watched, a shiver coursed down the line of her back and she set the knife aside with a click that sounded perfectly deliberate. She turned in place, took up a yellow-gold apple from the bowl, and held it out to Tony in one palm, her grey eyes solemn.

He swallowed, took it and tried not to think of fairy tales. "What do you want me to do with this?" he asked, grinning to dispel the ghosts that had gathered around them in the kitchen.

Then she smiled, the ironic arch of her brows somehow comforting as she said, "Meditate upon how far it's managed to come from the tree that grew it. Then go and lay two places at the table if you still need something else to keep you busy. Good afternoon, Captain Rogers." Sloane added as she turned away.

"Good afternoon, ma'am," Steve said from the doorway, shower damp and dressed in olive slacks and a black ribbed sweater that hugged his chest and waist obscenely, brightened his pale skin, and made his blue eyes blaze. Oh yeah, Tony was officially _over_ that tan-slacks-blue-shirt thing of Steve's forever, he decided.

"That's a new look," he managed to say as Sloane got out the pitcher again and poured a glass of tea for Steve.

The man grinned down at himself ruefully, and gave half a shrug as he accepted the glass. "Thank you, ma'am. Yeah, I don't usually wear the army issue stuff anymore. It's so old I'm always a little afraid the fabric's going to give if I move too fast. Seemed better than showing up to supper in gym clothes or pajamas though. Thanks for bringing it, Tony." He sipped at the tea, then edged into the room and nodded at the laden cutting boards. "Ma'am, Is there anything I can do to help out?"

Sloane froze him in place with a glance. "Not in bare feet, young man," she said, then turned a significant look Tony's way. 

"What?" he shrugged, defensive and positively _not_ unsettled by Steve's straight, pink toes peeking from under his trouser cuffs. "His house shoes were ripped to hell during the attack. Or the left one was, anyway. The right one disappeared somewhere over Queens, and I couldn't find any shoes at all in the trunk they recovered from your place, Steve."

He clicked his tongue. "Rats. I was hoping my boots had come through, at least. They were all broke in." He finished the tea with a long pull and set the glass on the counter. "Guess I'll clear out then. Is there someplace I can wait without being in the way?"

Tony opened his mouth to protest, but Sloane beat him to the punch. "There's coffee and some cookies on the sideboard in the dining room. I daresay you'll not spoil your appetite with them if what I've heard is true. And you might as well take this one along with you -- he's pestered me enough for one afternoon." 

"Hey now," Tony rose to his own defense, only to find himself ducking away from her knife-enhanced shooing motions. 

"Out, out. Get out of my kitchen at once. Go and speak with your guest like a civilized human being," she growled.

Given that Tony was now armed only with an apple, retreat suddenly seemed the best of all options. From the sudden, tugging grip on Tony's elbow, Steve seemed to agree. "Come on. You can show me where the dishes are," Steve said, nerves showing in his higher than normal tone. Sloane scoffed quietly at that, but made no further comment as Steve pulled Tony from the room.

Safely in the hall, Steve let go of his arm and murmured, _sotto vocce,_ "Tony, don't take this the wrong way, but…"

"Yeah," he said, "My housekeeper is fucking creepy, I know." He turned the yellow apple in his hand, then tossed it to Steve with a grin. "But for a psycho, she does make amazing cookies. Come on, dibs on the peanut butter chocolate chip."

~*~

Tony shouldn't have been surprised at it, but Sloane had gauged Steve's appetite just about exactly right. Steve had gone pink as the housekeeper brought dish after dish in, and had asked if all of it was for them, but when Tony had laughed at him and said "No pal, I'm pretty sure most of it's for you. Dig in," in he dug.

It was kind of amazing to watch, actually. Tony had been raised with two sets of manners when it came to food; one from his mother, which he used whenever someone gave him china and silverware and put him at a table. The other from Howard, which involved little more than fingers and about 3% of his attention at any given time, which he used at pretty much any other time he needed fuel, since it was really the most efficient of the two, and freed up his hands quickly for the work that was really important. 

Steve, though, seemed to have found a hybrid style between the two. He managed to be about as polite as any man eating enough for four could be; held his fork and knife correctly, kept his elbows off the table, took reasonable sized bites and chewed them well, but it was pretty clear that there was no room at the table for any polite conversation with Rogers the Destroyer cutting a swath.

Tony didn't mind. It was a pretty awe inspiring sight to watch Cap methodically destroy the meal on the table, and _still_ clearly enjoy each bite he put into his mouth. Gratifying, in a way that Tony usually didn't bother to think about, because he gave people stuff all the time; expensive stuff, trivial stuff, amazing stuff, awful stuff, hell, any stuff -- but he didn't always get to see them really _enjoying_ it. And Cap had the austerity thing down so well that in the year they'd been teammates, Tony had never really figured out how to give him much of anything but a hard time. This, sitting at Steve's elbow and watching while he sated himself at Tony's table, seemed weirdly like a favor that Steve was doing him, rather than the other way around; taking all that he wanted for once, because Tony was offering it, and not holding back at all. 

Even Sloane seemed grudgingly pleased when she cleared away the dessert dishes. She waved off Steve's thanks and praise for her cooking with irritable hands, but Tony didn't miss the flush of pleasure across her cheeks as she refilled the coffee and put the brandy decanter onto the table. 

"Mr. Stark hasn't mentioned how long you'll be staying on, Captain Rogers," she said, setting the snifters down in front of them. 

"That's because Mr. Stark doesn't know for sure," Tony griped, taking the decanter and pouring for them both. "And he'll get back to you when there's news, so shoo." 

He reveled in the vicious glare she gave him, and pretended he didn't see the tiny quirk of almost-smile lurking underneath it as she slunk back to the kitchen. Oh, one day one of them was surely going to kill the other one, Tony just knew it. Hell, Coulson probably already had all of the requisite 'whoops, my family member accidentally killed a superhero' paperwork filled out and waiting, just in case, cause he was scary organized like that. For now, though, Sloane had handed Tony the perfect opening to make his pitch to Steve, and Tony wasn't about to pass it up. 

"Steve, you didn't get knocked too hard in the head or anything the other night, did you?" he said, searching those blue eyes as he slid Steve's drink toward him, "I mean, you remember what happened during the attack, right?"

Anybody else would have rolled their eyes, but Steve only nodded, accepting the snifter and sipping politely. He didn't manage to hide his surprise at liking it, Tony noticed with satisfaction. "I remember it fine. Mr. Sulwen started yelling around eight. I heard banging so I went up to check it out, caught the HYDRA team trying to drag Mr. Dhirac away. Once they were down, tried to evacuate the building, but HYDRA had the street pinned down. When the shelling brought the building down there wasn't-"

"Wait," Tony cut in, "wait. HYDRA laid siege to the whole block; they set up five gunnery nests, barricaded the streets for like half a mile out, and brought out a fucking tank, but they weren't even there for you?"

Steve shook his head. "Nope." 

"So all of that collateral damage was for one little old man?" Tony shook his head, recalling the ambush Jarvis had spotted, the great cold something and its hidden squad of guards just waiting for Cap to pass by unwary. "No way. I can't buy that. Not with as hard as they worked to be sure the rest of us were too busy to interfere."

"Well, they probably did know I was around," Steve admitted, sipping at the brandy. "But it was Vilye Dhirac they were really after. Once I met him and Andre and learned what Vilye used to do when he lived in Latveria, I figured it was probably only going to be a matter of time until someone tried to get at him. Andre knew it, even if Vilye didn't want to think about it. He didn't exactly ask me to stay, but it was pretty clear he felt safer with me living downstairs. Heck, that's why I fought Fury so hard to stay put when he wanted me to move back to HQ." He took another sip, and shrugged. "Someone needed to stick around and look after those two. I figured I was qualified."

"And you didn't think any of the rest of us might need to know that you were standing guard over a retired Doombot Engineer?" Tony asked, not bothering to fight his grin. "You didn't think your super spy and billionaire buddies might have been useful in some capacity?" God, but that blush and abashed head-duck was a thing of beauty. Tony cackled and waved a gloating finger at Steve's blush. "Oh, I am _so_ going to remind you of that next time you go off on me about being a team player!"

Steve raised his face at that, cheeks still bright, but his eyes were all blue defiance, and the determination in that jutting chin could sink unwary ocean liners. Tony couldn't tell if he wanted more to twist his nose, or pinch his cheek, so he very carefully did neither one. "SHIELD recruits weapons designers too, as you know," he said primly. "I didn't want him pressured into anything. Not after all he'd gone through to get a clean slate here in the US.

"Anyway," he continued, eyes flickering away, "HYDRA might not have been overestimating his resistance when they planned the attack. I'm not completely sure it was just their guns that that brought the building down. Vilye did have a workshop in the basement."

"Right. Cause nothing says 'clean slate' like explosives in the cellar," Tony grinned, pushing back his chair and standing. "Old engineers never die, you know, we tend to explode." His pocket vibrated, distracting Tony for as long as it took to pull out his phone and realize that the blocked call was forwarded from his public number. Utterly ignorable, so he sent the call to voicemail and returned his attention to Steve. 

"Well, now that their cover and your apartment building are both blown, your buddies are apparently going to be working for me out west. New IDs for the both of them, secure campus housing, and not a weapons project to be found on the drawing board, so help me Stark Industries." He caught up the brandy decanter and beckoned Steve to follow him out of the dining room. "So you don't need to go throwing yourself between them and danger anymore. And that means no more shitty Brooklyn apartment, right?"

Steve snorted, looking somewhere between amused and annoyed as he followed Tony down the hall to Howard's study. "It wasn't a…" 

And it could have been Steve tripping over ' _shitty_ ' that caused his verbal stumble just there, but Tony figured it was far more likely that Steve had been stunned silent by the sight of Howard's gigantic fucking painting of Captain America, beaming a toothpaste smile and a cheeky salute from over the fireplace. Or it could have been the dozens of vintage photographs ranged across the mantel in chronological order; Project Rebirth, the USO, and all the way up through a tiny, grainy still-frame of a plane's landing gear against a grey sky. Or it could have been the actual vita-ray capsule Howard had designed for the procedure too, lovingly-lit and polished to a gleam in the same corner. 

Tony turned to look, mentally kicking himself for not thinking of setting a camera up in this room just for this moment. Because in a just and fair world, the sight of a horrified Steve Rogers walking face-first into Howard's altar to obsession really should live on YouTube forever. But no, he decided, watching the muscle in Steve's jaw flex, that would probably have fallen under Pepper's 'using his powers for evil' clause. 

"It was a nice apartment," Steve valiantly recaptured his train of thought after a moment, cheeks pink and back pointed squarely at the fireplace. "Nicer than lots of places I've stayed over the years."

"Yeah, yeah." Tony waved the protest off like a fly as he flung himself into one of the wing chairs that faced the desk. "Barefoot in the snow, uphill both ways in a newspaper coat, I get it. You're a humble man from a humble life, and you can do a lot with nothing at all, but look, it isn't necessary anymore, Cap. You're not a broke orphan without any other options, and you're not just one of a million other grunts doing time in the army. You're Captain goddamned America, and it's about time you lived like it, don't you think?"

"Tony, I'm-" 

"No. Don't talk, ok? Don't explain how I don't understand, just…" He took a drink and a breath, and tried again. "Can you just actually listen to me for a minute and not talk please? Please?" He nodded at the other chair, holding Steve's gaze and pretending the wrinkle of disapproval wasn't freaking him out just a little bit. 

He'd been so sure of his approach when Steve hadn't been in front of him, hadn't been staring him down with those arclight eyes that were full of a time Tony barely understood, and of losses Tony didn't want to. He was nearly as nervous now as he'd been before the Stark Expo, turning his guts into the airplane lav, and positive, just certain in every cell of his body, that he was about to irrevocably fuck everything up. Tony didn't _want_ to fuck this up. It was actually a little scary how badly he didn't want to. 

Finally Steve seemed to reach a decision. He nodded crisply and sat in the other chair, and Tony breathed around a sigh as the taut clenching worry in his chest unspooled a little and let him breathe.

"Ok, look," he began, pretending he could read some kind of welcome in that shuttered face. "None of us is normal. Spies, assassins, geniuses, demigods; we're not really anybody's garden variety, right? And I don't mean just the hero gig, either, because we've all been freaks and misfits from day one. We’re like a therapist's rolling nightmare of fucked up families and childhoods nobody should have to remember, but we stick. Somehow we stick when it counts, and we make it work." Steve was watching Tony speak, listening with the kind of single-minded focus Tony, whose brain was usually juggling five things at once, couldn't really fathom. It was equal parts awesome and unnerving, but he'd be damned if he was going to let it shake him now.

He waved a hand at Steve, from neat-combed hair to the razor crease in his antique trousers. "Look at you. You're a walking anachronism; a twenty-five year old man who was born ninety years ago, and you're _still_ the closest thing the Avengers has to an average joe. But you're not. Average. At all. And you never have been, no matter what you think. So that's why we need to stick together, see?" He searched Steve's face, hoping for some sign to tell him that he'd begun to make some kind of sense, or at least that he was still speaking English. 

"Tony, is this-"

He waved his hands again. "No, wait, I'm not done! We don't need you to take care of us, that's not what I'm saying. We're all big kids and pretty goddamned tough on our own, and we sure as hell don't need a nanny, which is why Phil's not invited, even though he's actually kind of stealth-cool, but we do need _you,_ Cap. We need you to be there, not for us, but _with_ us. Because if you're not there, then we kind of aren't either. I mean, each of us is there, because there is wherever we are, but we isn't the same as us, you know? And the world needs us to be we. And we need you to be with us." He took a drink then, mostly to stop the autopilot his mouth had gotten itself into, and after letting it burn on his tongue for a good long moment, swallowed it and gave a nod. "Okay, now I'm done."

"Okay," Steve said, and not in that befuddled, 'I'm not sure what happened here' kind of way, either. No, this ok had resolve behind it. Like they'd actually agreed to something without having to fight about it first. Suspicious, Tony quickly scrolled back over the conversation, looking for the setup.

"Okay what, exactly?"

Steve offered up the big brother of the hollow portrait grin on the wall behind him -- this one actually showed up in his eyes, -- and said, "Okay. I'll move into that apartment you're building in Stark Tower. Just tell me when it's ready." 

Tony didn't want to know what his face looked like right then, because the way Steve's grin actually fucking _grew_ was a pretty good sign that cool was nowhere in the description. He leveled a finger and glared. "Son of a _bitch_! Fury told you. Or Pepper told you. Goddamn it, it had better not have been Pepper, because you're way too damn pretty to be getting into her secrets behind my back, Rogers!"

Laughing, Steve shook his head. "Don't worry. Pepper's secrets are safe from me."

"Hey now!" Tony objected. "I'll have you know there is not a damn thing wrong with Pepper's secrets! She has _spectacular_ secrets!"

Steve interrupted quickly. "Nobody told me about your plans, Tony, I've just got a little practice anticipating the plans of crazy geniuses, is all. And you've been dropping plenty of clues these last few months, really."

"Great! Fantastic!" Tony threw up his hands, or rather, he threw up the left one, because the right one still had a glass of decent brandy in it, and he wanted to drink it rather than wear it. His phone buzzed in his pocket again, and Tony fished it out, grumbling to note it was another blocked number. "First you diss my best girl's secrets, then you compare me to the Red Skull, and then you call me obvious! I should order you a twin bed and star spangled sheets just for that!" He sent the call to voicemail and shot the rest of his drink in disgust.

Steve put on a face so earnest you could chip a tooth on it, and nodded. "Well, I suppose you could, but then I'd just have to take your bed instead." The grin came back out when Tony absolutely and positively did not spray brandy out his nose. "It's not like you're big enough to throw me out of it if I did, and I'm sure Pepper would understand."

And with that, Tony's brain choked on the sheer, vast number of inappropriate replies he could spin out of Steve -- Extra Virgin _Steve_ , no less, -- handing him those lines, tripped over the suddenly-very-clear memory of watching the man get off in his sleep, and then fell flat on its face into spluttering, mortified outrage. It was novel, in a horrifying way -- Tony hadn't known he could still _be_ shocked. "You!" he coughed, trying not to die. "Using your powers for EVIL!"

"It does actually happen sometimes," Steve agreed smugly.

"You know what?" Tony decided, reaching for the snifter. "This was a terrible idea. You can't possibly come live with me! I'm totally leaving you here to with Sloane, and Coulson can come visit you and change your litter once a week!" 

"No, it's a great idea, Tony," Steve replied, laughter still in his eyes, but no mockery now. "An Avengers headquarters at Stark Tower is a great idea, and you know it is. And you're right, we do need to stick together if we're going to trust each other in the field. Fury knows it is too. That's why he's been-"

"Stringing me along," Tony said through his teeth, quashing the urge to squirm at the sudden realization that he'd been played. Even distrusting, questioning, and second-guessing that one-eyed sphinx every step of the way, Tony was sure he'd put each foot down precisely where the bastard had planned. Even Coulson's quiet little mutiny after the Brooklyn attack had probably all been part of the plan, because Coulson was a sneaky, inscrutable little _shit_ who could clearly lie using only the absolute truth and a blank stare. Tony felt like throwing something, but the brandy and his phone were the only things within easy reach, and neither was worth it. "Fury's been fighting me over every little detail for months now, and-"

"And you've only fought back harder to get your way because of it," Steve agreed. "You chased him so hard he caught you. Wasn't fair, but a headquarters for the team was -- _is_ a really good idea. And anyway, Fury outranks me; I don't get to tell him what to do. I was just lucky he let me stay in Brooklyn until you got the Tower finished."

Tony cracked a glare between his fingers. "Wait, what do you mean, he _let_ you stay? You finished your tour, went down a hero, and now you can go wherever you goddamn well like. Colonel Fury doesn't own you, Steve."

He nodded, solemn all of a sudden, and held out his snifter to be refilled. "I know. But if he really wanted me out of that apartment, I think we both know he'd have gotten his way. It's not like I have the resources to out maneuver the Director of SHIELD, is it?" He shook his head. "Not on my own. And that's where you and I agree, Tony; I need you… _us_ too." 

Tony stared, transfixed by something that looked unguarded, earnest and trusting in Steve's face, something he was sure had never been there for him before. Or hadn't been willing to come into the light, anyhow. He held that gaze and tried not to wonder what his own face was showing; not quite able to look away, not quite ready to think too hard about the weight in his belly, or the tightness at his throat. 

Just when he was getting desperate enough to try and make a crack about manicures or braiding each other's hair though, Steve's sidelong smirk came to the rescue. "But you'd still better not try and put me in a twin bed," he said.

Relief made Tony's answering laugh louder than he'd intended, but he didn't bother to pull it back. "Fuck you, buddy. You can order your own damned furniture! What do I look like, an interior designer?"

Steve grins back, then made a show of eyeing Tony, from his hand made plum linen shirt to the sheen of silk in the weave of his suit pants. "At this _very_ moment?" Then he laughed again as Tony showed off his favorite finger.

Tony's phone rang again before either of them had stopped giggling, and because it was Jarvis this time, Tony answered it.

"I'm sorry to interrupt, Sir," Jarvis said when Tony fished it out of his pocket and got it unlocked. "But Agent Barton requested my assistance in reaching you, and insisted it was an emergency." Oh, so that accounted for the blocked cell numbers, he supposed.

"What situation, exactly," Tony asked, only half concerned, "Is he, or the house on fire?"

"No sir, but-"

"Is Bruce there? Still pink?"

"Dr. Banner is calm at present, sir, though-"

"Is anybody bleeding?" Tony pressed, watching Steve's eyebrow climb higher on his forehead with each query. "Are there lawyers? Reporters? Cops? Aliens?"

"Prince Thor has arrived, sir," Jarvis clipped frostily.

Tony rolled his eyes. "Okay, the only way that Thor counts as 'Alien' is if his brother's bringing an invading army to Manhattan again. Jarvis, Thor's got his own key! So long as he doesn't fry all the electronics with that hammer of his, him being there does not constitute an emergency."

"Thor's got his own key?" Steve murmured, his pout still too full of laughter to be anything like plausible. "I don't have my own key."

"Leaving you with Sloane," Tony reminded him archly, then returned to Jarvis. "Okay, look. Tell Barton that there is no emergency. Anything other than what I've already asked you about, you should be able to deal with just fine until I'm done here at the Manor."

There was a pause, in which Tony could practically hear Jarvis calculating pi, then the AI replied with dangerous calm. "Very well sir, I'll put through a call to the Quinjet at once."

"Wait, the Quinjet? What are they doing on the-"

"In the meantime, may I suggest you check your voicemail messages?" Then he cut the call. Because Jarvis fucking _sucked_ , was why.

"Shit!"

"Tony, what's happened?" Steve barked, already out of his chair and ready to storm off barefoot into the fray.

"Dunno, give me a sec." He queued Barton's messages and pressed play, listening intently. "Okay, so Thor's back… Rainbow bridge fixed… fuck, my helipad? Really? That's not right! Dr. Foster's at the tower, and… Um… Shit."

" _Stark!_

Numbly, Tony pressed replay, and sent the final message to speaker. Then he met Steve's alarmed glare with full measure of despair in his face as the sound of Clint Barton's voice shouting over jet engines filled the study.

"Okay, look. We got Thor. We got Dr. Foster. We got Dr. Foster's hot intern. We got a gay pride inter-dimentional highway running to the helipad of your tower. We got Sif, and holy shit, you gotta _see_ this one, Stark. We got the Warriors Three, and I think the pretty one is trying to make time with Jarvis and he isn't even drunk, that I can tell. Fuck, man, we got goddamned Valkyries! _Valkyries,_ Stark! But you know what we don't got? We don't got the Lord of the Manor here to give them a proper Midgardian welcome. And we don't got nearly enough beer to do this shindig right. So we're bringing the party to you, Stark! See you in twenty!" 

Then came the beep, and then a dense, horrified silence that Tony was pretty sure weighed more than the core of the moon.

"Wow," Steve said after a moment.

"Uh huh."

"That's…a party."

"Yeah." Tony dropped his head into his hands and despaired.

"Tony, your housekeeper -"

"I know," he said to his palms. "My crabby psycho housekeeper who kind of hates me is about to meet the Prince of Asgard and his posse, and Pepper is way too far away to help me escape her wrath. If you were truly my friend, you would kill me right now."

A warm, weighty grip fell on Tony's shoulder, the fingers pressing gentle solidarity for a moment before they clenched into Tony's jacket and hauled him to his feet. "No way, pal," Steve said over Tony's squawk as he marched them both out the door. "I'll lie on the wire for you, but you're the one crawling over. Let's go."

~*~

It was a month before Sloane would speak to Tony again.

A month, new tile in the entryway, cleaning and repair of the carpets in two rooms, a replacement for the driveway fountain, a full restock of the bar and wine cellars, Jarvis' new servers along with new wiring and security throughout, the four windows that had sadly not been keg-proof, and a replacement for the old pear tree behind the kitchen that had set its capacity at no more than three Asgardians plus one nuclear physicist at a time. 

Once she sobered up, Sif got Natasha to help her write out an apology (though not an explanation,) to Sloane for the horse incident. Darcy deleted (under protest,) half the photo uploads on her Facebook account. The FAA issued a sternly worded warning to all flying individuals on the premises, but couldn't find any actual flight regulations that had been broken that night, so only Pepper really worried about it. One of the closest liquor stores to the Manor never actually reopened after the party. The YouTube videos of Coulson singing Cab Calloway karaoke songs developed mysterious viruses and disappeared from the web before Tony had even shaken the hangover. One Valkyrie went missing. (She turned up in Anchorage later that year, happily married to a librarian.) Volstaag sent lavish courting presents over the Bifrost to 'The Silver-Eyed Guardian of Lord Stark Hall' for weeks until Thor put a stop to it. 

Steve, who had stayed behind at the Manor to try and smooth things over the next day, (because he obviously had some kind of a fixation with sweeping up wreckage,) seemed to think that Sloane wasn't quite as offended as Tony knew she clearly was. Steve had no idea just how mean the old lady could be, was all. He didn't know his peril, and that was technically stealing Tony's gig. But every time Tony tried to warn him, the big idiot just insisted he was doing fine there, in no danger, and actually enjoying helping her out around the place. He claimed he liked being kept busy while the last of the repairs on his apartment were being done, but Tony knew he was right to be worried. Stockholm Syndrome could happen to anyone, after all.

Finally, weary of breaking his teeth on the Immovable Object that was Sloane's resentment, Tony found himself reduced to his old tactic of buying forgiveness. Nothing else was working to chip through the frosty silence, and he was tired of not winning his way. Pepper suggested he should try sending Sloane flowers like he always did with her, but Steve thought she'd probably rather have some heirloom tomato plants for her garden instead. Remembering the axe incident, Tony found he agreed, albeit nervously. On the day they were delivered, though, he knew he'd won -- Sloane made Steve call Tony to the Mansion to dig all the holes and build her a new planting box/body stashing site. He survived lunch without being poisoned, and that's how he knew he was finally forgiven.

When Steve moved into Avengers Tower properly a week pater, the whole epic welcoming party sank into the cosy, alcohol-tinted realm of 'no shit, there I was' for all of them. Its terrors were retold as jokes, its giddy triumphs dutifully disbelieved by heroes that night abed, who afterward thought themselves lame that they were not there and held their party-cred cheap whilst any spoke that partied with the Avengers upon Thor's Moving In Day. 

Except for Reed Richards, whom everybody knew was allergic to fun and wouldn't have been invited anyhow.

The one thing nobody ever tried to explain about that night, nor in fact, did Tony ever actually ask about it, was just how a life-sized, heavily framed vintage painting of Captain America; the first Avenger, managed to disappear from the house without anybody actually noticing it. Not that Tony missed it, of course, but he did have to wonder just a bit. Especially when word made it back that the painting had actually turned up in the royal armory of Asgard with a note scrawled in Sharpie marker across the bottom, declaring it was a gift 'To Odin, the Best Dad on Asgard.'

All things concerned, Tony really thought it was better not to know.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For those who are counting, this concludes the fifth part of _5 Times Steve Rogers Rubbed Tony Stark Exactly the Wrong Way, (And One Time He Didn't.) This means that yes, there will be one more story in this arc. Yes, things will get spicier in the +1. Thanks for reading along!_


End file.
